Security Enhancement Mechanism Based on Contextual Authentication and Role Analysis for 2G-RFID Systems

The traditional Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system, in which the information maintained in tags is passive and static, has no intelligent decision-making ability to suit application and environment dynamics. The Second-Generation RFID (2G-RFID) system, referred as 2G-RFID-sys, is an evolution of the traditional RFID system to ensure better quality of service in future networks. Due to the openness of the active mobile codes in the 2G-RFID system, the realization of conveying intelligence brings a critical issue: how can we make sure the backend system will interpret and execute mobile codes in the right way without misuse so as to avoid malicious attacks? To address this issue, this paper expands the concept of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) by introducing context-aware computing, and then designs a secure middleware for backend systems, named Two-Level Security Enhancement Mechanism or 2L-SEM, in order to ensure the usability and validity of the mobile code through contextual authentication and role analysis. According to the given contextual restrictions, 2L-SEM can filtrate the illegal and invalid mobile codes contained in tags. Finally, a reference architecture and its typical application are given to illustrate the implementation of 2L-SEM in a 2G-RFID system, along with the simulation results to evaluate how the proposed mechanism can guarantee secure execution of mobile codes for the system.