Security Framework for RFID-based Applications in Smart Home Environment

The concept of Smart-Homes is becoming more and more popular. It is anticipated that Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology will play a major role in such environments. We can find many previously proposed schemes that focus solely on: authentication between the RFID tags and readers, and user privacy protection from malicious readers. There has also been much talk of a very popular RFID application: a refrigerator/bookshelf that can scan and list out the details of its items on its display screen. Realizing such an application is not as straight forward as it seems to be, especially in securely deploying such RFID-based applications in a smart home environment. Therefore this paper describes some of the RFID-based applications that are applicable to smart home environments. We then identify their related privacy and security threats and security requirements and also propose a secure approach, where RFID-tagged consumer items, RFID-reader enabled appliances (e.g., refrigerators), and RFID-based applications would securely interact among one another. At the moment our approach is just a conceptual idea, but it sheds light on very important security issues related to RFID-based applications that are beneficial for consumers.