A simple and effective attack against an authenticaion protocol for RFID systems

Authentication protocol is of great importance to ensure the security and privacy of users for RFID systems. In this paper, a lightweight authentication protocol for RFID systems was reviewed and a simple and effective attack was found. To launch the attack, an attacker only needs a rogue reader and sends a number of random values to a target tag. Then the tag will go on updating its state until it cannot be recognized by its server. Subsequently, the attacker repeats the attack to other tags, and he will paralyze the RFID system eventually. Finally, a countermeasure to fix the flaw was presented.