Understand RFID technology in one article! 3 types, 6 fields, 7 major advantages

Why can our express deliveries always be accurately on the route? Why are the huge number of books in the school library managed neatly and orderly? Why can some accidentally stolen items be quickly tracked back? All of these require the use of RFID technology, because in this era of the Internet of Things, it is one of the key technologies for data connection and data exchange.

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What is RFID technology? RFID, also known as radio frequency identification, uses radio signals to identify and read and write specific target data. It can complete identification and reading and writing data without mechanical contact or specific complex environments. Nowadays, the RFID technology application that everyone talks about is actually RFID tags, which already exist in every aspect of our lives.

It works in two ways. One is that when the RFID tag enters the effective identification range of the reader, it receives the radio frequency signal sent by the reader and sends out the information stored in the chip with the energy obtained by the induced current. The other is that the RFID tag actively sends a signal of a certain frequency. After the reader receives and decodes the information, it sends it to the central information system for relevant data processing.

In the mid-twentieth century, based on the improvement and application of radar, radio frequency identification technology began to lay the foundation, and then began to develop initially. To this day, the application of RFID technology has a history of half a century. At present, RFID technology is developing well at home and abroad, especially in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Japan, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. These countries all have relatively mature and advanced RFID systems. my country is also not far behind in this regard. A relatively successful case is the launch of a completely independent research long-distance automatic identification system.

Next, I will show you how to understand RFID technology:

1. Three types

There are three main categories of products derived from RFID technology:

1. Passive RFID products:

This type of product requires close contact identification, such as meal cards, bank cards, bus cards and ID cards. These types of cards require close contact for work identification. The main working frequencies are low frequency 125KHZ, high frequency 13.56MHZ, ultra-high frequency 433MHZ and 915MHZ. This type of product is also common in our lives and is also a relatively early developed product.

2. Active RFID products:

This type of product has the characteristics of long-distance automatic identification, so it is applied to some large environments accordingly, such as smart parking lots, smart cities, smart transportation and the Internet of Things. Their main working frequencies are microwave 2.45GHZ and 5.8GHZ, and ultra-high frequency 433MHZ.

3. Semi-active RFID products:

As the name implies, it is a combination of active RFID products and passive RFID products. It combines the advantages of both, and under the triggering of the low frequency 125KHZ frequency, it allows the microwave 2.45G to play its advantages, solving the problems that active RFID products and passive RFID products cannot solve, such as access control management, regional positioning management, security alarm and other applications, short-distance activation positioning, and long-distance data transmission.

2. Six areas

RFID technology has the characteristics of strong anti-interference and no need for manual identification, so it is often used in some fields that need to collect or track information, including but not limited to the following seven points:

1. Warehouse/Transportation/Supplies:

By embedding RFID chips into goods and storing them in warehouses, shopping malls, and other places as well as during the logistics process, the goods-related information is automatically collected by the reader/writer, and the management personnel can quickly query the goods information in the system, reducing the risk of discarding or theft, speeding up the delivery of goods, improving the accuracy, and preventing channeling and counterfeiting.

2. Access control/attendance:

Some companies or large conferences can enter their identity or fingerprint information in advance and then sign in through the door recognition system, which saves a lot of time and is convenient and labor-saving.

3. Fixed assets management:

Places with huge assets or valuable items, such as libraries, art galleries and museums, need to have complete management procedures or rigorous protection measures. When there are abnormal changes in the storage information of books or valuables, the administrator will be reminded in the system immediately to handle the relevant situation.

4. Train/Car Identification/Luggage Security Inspection:

my country's railway vehicle dispatching system is a typical case. It automatically identifies vehicle numbers and inputs information, saving a lot of manual statistics time and improving accuracy.

5. Medical information tracking:

Case tracking, waste tracking, drug tracking, etc. are all good ways to improve hospital service levels and efficiency.

6. Military/Defense/National Security:

The movements of some important military medicines, guns, ammunition or military vehicles need to be tracked in real time.

Three, seven advantages

1. Super strong anti-interference ability

One of its most important advantages is non-contact identification. It can work in extremely harsh environments, has strong penetration, and can quickly identify and read labels.

2. The data capacity of RFID tags is very large

It can be expanded to 10k based on user needs, which is much higher than the capacity of 2725 digits in the QR code bar.

3. Dynamic operation is possible

Its tag data can be dynamically modified using programming, and can be dynamically tracked and monitored as long as the object to which the RFID tag is attached appears within the effective recognition range of the reader.

4. Long service life

Because of its strong anti-interference ability, RFID tags are not easily damaged and have a long service life.

5. Anti-collision

Within the effective recognition range of the reader, it can read multiple RFID tags at the same time.

6. High security

RFID tags can be attached to products in any form, and the tag data can be encrypted to improve security.

7. Fast recognition speed

As soon as the RFID tag enters the effective recognition range of the reader, it starts reading data immediately, and recognition can usually be completed in less than 100 milliseconds.

4. Advance and retreat together

Of course, every technology has its pros and cons. Even today, RFID technology still has its flaws. The application of ultra-high frequency band technology is not widespread enough, the technology is not mature enough, related products are expensive, and the stability is not high. There is no unified standard established internationally.

At present, RFID technology is closely related to our daily life. In the current era of the Internet of Things, if RFID technology is improved, RFID ultra-high frequency technology matures, and the RFID ultra-high frequency market is widely used, the development of the Internet of Things will be pushed to a new height.

5. Further reading: Top 10 RFID security issues and threats

Like other security devices, the security of RFID devices is not perfect. Although RFID devices have been widely used, the security threats they bring need to be addressed before the devices are deployed. The following will mainly introduce several RFID-related security issues.

1. RFID counterfeiting

Based on computing power, RFID can be divided into three categories:

• Common tags
• Tags using symmetric keys
• Tags using asymmetric keys

Among them, ordinary tags do not perform any encryption operations and are easy to forge. However, ordinary tags are widely used in logistics management and tourism. Attackers can easily write information into a blank RFID tag or modify an existing tag to obtain access rights corresponding to the authentication system using RFID tags. For ordinary tags, attackers can do the following three things:

Based on computing power, RFID can be divided into three categories:

• Modify the data in an existing label to make an invalid label valid, or vice versa, to make a valid label invalid. For example, you can modify the label content of a product and then buy an expensive product at a lower price.
• It is still modifying the label, but the content of one label is changed to the content of another label, which is like replacing the prince with a cat.
• Create your own label based on the content of other people's labels.

Therefore, when you want to use RFID tags in systems that process sensitive information such as ID cards, you must use encryption technology. But if you have to use ordinary tags, you must ensure that there are appropriate security specifications, monitoring and auditing procedures to detect any abnormal behavior in the RFID system.

2. RFID Sniffing

RFID sniffing is a major problem in RFID systems. RFID readers always send authentication request information to tags. When the reader receives the authentication information sent by the tag, it uses the backend database to verify the legitimacy of the tag authentication information.

Unfortunately, most RFID tags do not authenticate the legitimacy of the RFID reader, so an attacker can use his own reader to obtain the content of the tag.

3. Tracking

By reading the content on the tag, an attacker can track the movement of an object or person. When a tag enters the readable range of the reader, the reader can identify the tag and record the tag's current location.

Regardless of whether the communication between the tag and the reader is encrypted, there is no way to escape the fact that the tag can be tracked. An attacker can use a mobile robot to track the location of the tag.

4. Denial of Service

When the reader receives the authentication information from the tag, it compares the authentication information with the information in the back-end database. Both the reader and the back-end database are vulnerable to denial of service attacks.

When a denial of service attack occurs, the reader will not be able to complete the authentication of the tag and cause the interruption of other corresponding services. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that there is a corresponding mechanism to prevent denial of service attacks between the reader and the back-end database.

5. Deception

In a spoofing attack, the attacker often pretends to be a legitimate user. Sometimes, the attacker pretends to be the administrator of the back-end database. If the impersonation is successful, the attacker can do anything he wants, such as responding to invalid requests, changing RFID tags, refusing normal services, or simply implanting malicious code in the system.

6. Denial

Denial is when a user refuses to admit that he has performed an operation after performing it. When a denial is sent, the system has no way to verify whether the user has actually performed the operation.

In the use of RFID, there are two possible denials: one is that the sender or receiver may deny having performed an operation, such as issuing an RFID request, in which case we have no evidence to prove whether the sender or receiver has issued an RFID request; the other is that the owner of the database may deny that they have given any tag to an item or person.

7. Insertion attack

In this attack, the attacker attempts to send a system command to the RFID system instead of the normal data content. The simplest example is that the attacker inserts the attack command into the normal data stored in the tag.

8. Retransmission Attack

The attacker intercepts the communication between the tag and the reader, records the tag's response to the reader's authentication request, and then retransmits this information to the reader. An example of a retransmission attack is that the attacker records the information used for authentication between the tag and the reader.

9. Physical Attack

Physical attacks occur when the attacker is able to physically access the tag and tamper with the tag's information. There are many ways to perform physical attacks, such as using microprobes to read and modify tag content, using X-rays or other rays to destroy tag content, and using electromagnetic interference to disrupt the communication between the tag and the reader.

In addition, anyone can easily use a knife or other tools to artificially damage the tag, so that the reader cannot recognize the tag.

10. Viruses

Like other information systems, RFID systems are vulnerable to virus attacks. In most cases, the virus targets the backend database. RFID viruses can destroy or leak the tag content stored in the backend database, and deny or interfere with the communication between the reader and the backend database. In order to protect the backend database, database vulnerabilities and other risks must be patched in a timely manner.

Although RFID systems are often the target of attacks, they are still widely used in many fields due to their low cost. Therefore, when preparing to deploy RFID systems, you must pay more attention to its security issues, especially the first four attacks described in this article: forgery, sniffing, tracking, and denial of service attacks.