The Ff-family of protocols for RFID-privacy and authentication

In this paper, we present the design of the lightweight $F_f$ family of privacy-preserving authentication protocols for RFID-systems. $F_f$ results from a systematic design based on a new algebraic framework focusing on the security and privacy of RFID authentication protocols. $F_f$ offers user-adjustable, strong authentication and privacy against known algebraic attacks and recently popular SAT-solving attacks. In contrast to related work, $F_f$ achieves these security properties without requiring an expensive cryptographic hash function. $F_f$ is designed for a challenge-response protocol, where the tag sends random nonces and the results of HMAC-like computations of one of the nonces together with its secret key back to the reader. In this paper, the authentication and privacy of $F_f$ is evaluated using analytical and experimental methods.