Vulnerabilities of RFID protocols proposed in ISF

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags are increasingly being incorporated in a wide variety of applications despite the absence of completely secure authentication protocols. While this is acceptable in some applications, there is an urgent need to address vulnerabilities in existing protocols to develop better, non-vulnerable protocols. Not surprisingly, this continues to be a very active area for research and development. Recently, the Information Systems Frontiers Journal published two papers dealing with RFID authentication protocols. The protocols introduced in these papers, however, are vulnerable to attacks from an active adversary. We identify some existing vulnerabilities in these authentication protocols.