Exploring the RFID mutual authentication domain

Mutual Authentication is the initial and the most significant line of defense in any open and trusted network system. Weaknesses in mutual authentication protocol may lead to eavesdropping, unauthorized access to the tag or reader data, Denial of Service attack, counterfeiting attack, de-synchronization attack, location tracking, cloning attack, timing attack, man-in-the-middle attack, spoofing attack, and many more. As a result of continuous focus on research of mutual authentication protocols for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, numerous solutions to address the security issues of RFID system have been proposed. A Comprehensive survey of existing state-of-the-art RFID mutual authentication protocols is presented in this paper. The ultimate objective of this survey paper is to categorize the existing RFID mutual authentication protocols on the basis of their working principle along with their strengths and weaknesses. This categorization of RFID mutual authentication protocols will be beneficial for new researchers to have a quick overview and understanding of the domain and will serve as an input to devise more effective and efficient algorithms for RFID mutual authentication. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.