ElectroMagnetic Attack Test Platform for Validating RFID Tag Architectures
Yassine Naija, Vincent Beroulle, Mohsen Machhout · 2018
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is more and more used in our daily life. Secure RFID communication is a mandatory factor in many sectors such as banking and ticketing. However, passive attacks as ElectroMagnetic Attacks (EMA) represent a serious threat for RFID tags. In this article, we propose an EMA test platform based on FPGA that allows validating RFID tag digital architectures and evaluating their security against EMA. First, we propose a tag architecture that respects the ISO/IEC 14443 type A and implements the Mifare Desfire authentication protocol. It requires 2713 LUTs (Look-Up Table) and consumes about 2 mW. Then, the EMA is performed against the block cipher embedded in this architecture with 3000 electromagnetic traces. Finally, in order to mitigate this attack, we propose a countermeasure based on a data-masking scheme (+128 LUTs) that prevents attacker to emulate the tag using a fake reader. This countermeasure hides the data input of the block cipher without modifying neither the encryption algorithm operations nor the authentication protocol as done in previous works.