RFID security in door locks

Abstract: Radio frequency identification, RFID is a technology that is used in many fields including locks. The unlimited access to the reader and the transponder has resulted in severe security weaknesses and made it possible to apply different attacks. To classify door locks as secure they must at least fulfil two main criteria: the first is the use of a challenge-response authentication protocol and the second is to deploy sophisticated and secure algorithms. MiFare classic and KeeLoq are two widely applied technologies that are still in use in many security critical applications and are considered to be secure but which have been broken by cryptanalysis and with modest efforts and cost. How secure a certain solution is depends on how expensive it is to buy the equipment that can break the system and reveal the secret key and how secure a lock should be depends on the value of what it is protecting. The dropping price of powerful computers and the availability of security related information on the web will lead to an increase of the number of attacks on different systems. By the time this thesis is published those locks evaluated are not secure enough, to overcome the security shortage some improvements have to be made such as: the use of sophisticated algorithms, the use of longer key of at least 128-bit, the use of non-deterministic random number generators and the use of pure hardware solutions both in the receiver and the transmitter to reduce leakage.