2012 Symposium Posters

Project Members
Robert Winkworth

Radio frequency identification has enabled exciting new prospects in wireless ID services, particularly for personnel. Unfortunately, the earliest applications relied upon acquiescent mechanisms that accepted and returned data with no intermediary processing. The advent of "smart" cards made possible an on-chip revolution in the use of contact identification devices. What I explore here is the extension of these embedded systems to their non-contact counterparts (namely RFID). The processing layer is of utmost importance to us in the study of privacy controls, as it opens the discussion on how personnel ID in general may evolve from storage devices that may be intercepted and duplicated into cryptographically sound logic devices that can resist common attacks and directly participate in the decisions concerning disclosure. This brings us to one of the most vital aspects of the research, the zero-knowledge proof. Frequently RFID is applied as a convenient means of answering questions about discrete state (from a comfortable distance). Wherever possible, we wish to answer those questions without compromising user privacy in the process. The integration of RFID and embedded systems allows us to perform proofs based on internal comparisons and calculations rather than irrevocable release of the data. This is the security of the embedded systems used widely in electronic commerce with the convenience of near-field communications. It holds the promise of a better all-around user experience, with better protections, more control, and easier methods of performing common objectives.