Practical Attacks on Proximity Identification Systems (Short Paper)

Gerhard P. Hancke

Abstract: The number of RFID devices used in everyday life has increased, along with concerns about their security and user privacy. This paper describes our initial findings on practical attacks that we implemented against 'proximity' (ISO 14443 A) type RFID tokens. Focusing mainly on the RF communication interface we discuss the results and implementation of eavesdropping, unauthorized scanning and relay attacks. Although most of these attack scenarios are regularly mentioned in literature little technical details have been published previously. We also present a short overview of mechanisms currently available to prevent these attacks