RFID Technology: Security and Privacy Challenges and Solutions

This report delves into the multifaceted challenges associated with Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, focusing on security and privacy concerns. It explores issues such as disruption from electromagnetic interference, reader and tag collisions, difficulties in tag removal, unauthorized reading, and the potential for data breaches through high-gain antennas and credit card linking. The report also addresses the cost implications of RFID implementation. The report synthesizes these challenges, providing an overview of the current state of research and potential mitigation strategies, emphasizing the need for ongoing research to address the identified vulnerabilities and improve the technology's security and affordability. The report also includes a brief overview of the annotated bibliography, research findings and the recommendations for future research.

Running head: INTERNET OF THINGS
Internet of Things
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...................................................................................................................2
Challenges with the RFID Tags:....................................................................................2
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................4
References:.....................................................................................................................5

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Introduction:
The RFID or the Radio-frequency identification is special type technology which is
uses the electromagnetic waves for identification of tags and objective which are attached
with the objective (Peris-Lopez et al., 2016). Some important electronic information is stored
within this type of chips. This type of chips are very much useful for the object tracking
purposes but also faces some challenges. In this aspects the challenges faced by the RFID
tags will be introduced.
Challenges with the RFID Tags:
The main challenges which are associated with the RFID tags are discussed in the
following section.
 Disruption Issue: From various of scenarios it has been assessed that the RFID tags
can be disrupted easily. The main reason that it can be disrupted easily is the
electromagnetic spectrum. The RFID tags can be jammed easily by using the
electromagnetic energy at the right frequency. Due to this factor inconvenience can
be occurred while using the RFID tags and major problem can occur where use of
RFID is sensitive including the medical and military field.
 Reader Collison: There is a specific type of issues within the RFID tags which is the
reader collision issue. This type of issue occurs within the system when the signals
from more than one RFID tags overlaps with each other. Due to this type of
challenges the RFID tag become unable to respond to the queries that are coming
simultaneously. In this type of situation the system need to act promptly and need to
avoid this type of collisions (Greco et al., 2015). Many of the system uses the anti-
collision protocol to mitigate this issue. The anti-collision protocol helps in this case
by turning the tags in transmitting to a reader.

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 Tag Collison: Like the reader collision tag collision is also a big issue within the for
the RFID tags. This type of tag collision issue occurs with the system when many
tags are present in a small size of area (Jia et al., 2019). Due to this factor the tags
fails to respond appropriately to query.
 Removal Difficulty: It has been assessed that the RFID tags utilization is not
convenient for the normal consumers at all. The main reason behind that it is very
much difficult to remove. There is a difficulty for the consumers to remove the RFID
tags as most of the RFID tags are very much small. The other RFID tags mostly
remains hidden from the normal eyesight of the consumers. Due to this reasons the
RFID tags are not user friendly which is one of the important challenges about the
RFID tag which need to be considered.
 Unauthorised Reading Issue: It has been assessed that the RFID tags can be easily
read by some more individuals other than the users. As the RFID tags do not need
any type of swiping or scanning, it can be easily read by some other individuals
without the prior knowledge of the user (Liu, Geng & Pahlavan, 2015). Through this
some confidential information about the users can be easily exposed. Thus this is one
of the biggest challenge in this case.
 Reading issue by High Gain Antenna: The RFID tags are mainly designed for
operating between small distances so that it can be protected from any type of
unauthorised access. But this safety of the RFID tags can be also breached by using
the high gain antenna (Fahim et al., 2018). By using the high gain antenna these
RFID tags can be easily read by some other individuals from much more further
distances. Thus this issues regarding the RFID tags need to be fixed.
 Linking with Credit Cards: The RFID tags can be linked with some individuals
credit cards easily and it is a very much important hazard that need to be mitigated

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properly. Linking credit card with the RFID tags is not an issue but the main issue
which occurs due to this is that the credit can information can be stolen in this type of
cases as it is very much easy to read information from a RFID tags.
 Cost Issue: In the case of RFID implementation there is another challenges which is
related with cost. The RFID tags are currently very much costly from both the aspects
of hardware and the software. Due to this factor implementation of RFID tags
becomes very much challenging.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that RFID tags is one of the most
futureproof solution but currently facing various of challenges. Thus in this aspect it is very
much important to mitigate the challenges first before implementing the technology RFID in
mass. Currently, various of researches are conducted for fixing the current issues with the
RFID and the researches are getting success slowly. Also, this RFID must be in some
affordable price tag so that it can be used by majority of the peoples.

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References:
Peris-Lopez, P., Hernandez-Castro, J. C., Estevez-Tapiador, J. M., & Ribagorda, A. (2016).
Lightweight cryptography for lowcost rfid tags. Security in RFID and Sensor Networks, 121-
150.
Greco, G., Lucianaz, C., Bertoldo, S., & Allegretti, M. (2015, September). Localization of
RFID tags for environmental monitoring using UAV. In 2015 IEEE 1st International Forum
on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry Leveraging a better tomorrow
(RTSI) (pp. 480-483). IEEE.
Liu, G., Geng, Y., & Pahlavan, K. (2015, February). Effects of calibration RFID tags on
performance of inertial navigation in indoor environment. In 2015 International Conference
on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC) (pp. 945-949). IEEE.
Jia, X., Bolic, M., Feng, Y., & Gu, Y. (2019). An Efficient Dynamic Anti-collision Protocol
for Mobile RFID Tags Identification. IEEE Communications Letters.
Fahim, A., Elbatt, T., Mohamed, A., & Al-Ali, A. (2018). Towards Extended Bit Tracking for
Scalable and Robust RFID Tag Identification Systems. IEEE Access, 6, 27190-27204.