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Attacks on time-of-flight distance bounding channels

Published: 31 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Cryptographic distance-bounding protocols verify the proximity of two parties by timing a challenge-response exchange. Such protocols rely on the underlying communication channel for accurate and fraud-resistant round- trip-time measurements, therefore the channel's exact timing properties and low-level implementation details become security critical. We practically implement 'late-commit' attacks, against two commercial radio receivers used in RFID and sensor networks, that exploit the latency in the modulation and decoding stages. These allow the attacker to extend the distance to the verifier by several kilometers. We also discuss how 'overclocking' a receiver can make a prover respond early. We practically implement this attack against an ISO 14443A RFID token and manage to get a response 10 µs earlier than normal. We conclude that conventional RF channels can be problematic for secure distance-bounding implementations and discuss the merits and weaknesses of special distance-bounding channels that have been proposed for RFID applications.

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cover image ACM Conferences
WiSec '08: Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Wireless network security
March 2008
234 pages
ISBN:9781595938145
DOI:10.1145/1352533
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 31 March 2008

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Author Tags

  1. RFID
  2. data modulation
  3. distance-bounding protocols
  4. location-based authentication
  5. low-latency communication
  6. radio channels
  7. round-trip time measurement
  8. speed of light
  9. wireless communication

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WISEC '08
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WISEC '08: First ACM Conference on Wireless Network Security
March 31 - April 2, 2008
VA, Alexandria, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 98 of 338 submissions, 29%

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  • (2025)Security of Distance Bounding ProtocolsEncyclopedia of Cryptography, Security and Privacy10.1007/978-3-030-71522-9_62(2320-2321)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2025
  • (2024)Cross-Layer RF Distance Bounding Scheme for Passive and Semi-passive Ubiquitous Computing SystemsComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2023.103633137:COnline publication date: 1-Feb-2024
  • (2021)Security Analysis of Machine Learning-Based PUF Enrollment Protocols: A ReviewSensors10.3390/s2124841521:24(8415)Online publication date: 16-Dec-2021
  • (2021)Spectrum-flexible secure broadcast rangingProceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks10.1145/3448300.3467819(300-310)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
  • (2021)Internet of Things Security Requirements, Threats, Attacks, and CountermeasuresDeep Learning Techniques for IoT Security and Privacy10.1007/978-3-030-89025-4_3(67-112)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2021
  • (2021)From Relay Attacks to Distance-Bounding ProtocolsSecurity of Ubiquitous Computing Systems10.1007/978-3-030-10591-4_7(113-130)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2021
  • (2019)Security Implications of Implementing Multistate Distance-Bounding ProtocolsProceedings of the ACM Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems Security & Privacy10.1145/3338499.3357359(99-108)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2019
  • (2019)Approaches for Best-Effort Relay-Resistant Channels on Standard Contactless Channels2019 IEEE 17th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN)10.1109/INDIN41052.2019.8972254(1719-1724)Online publication date: Jul-2019
  • (2018)Security of Distance-BoundingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/326462851:5(1-33)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2018
  • (2018)HB+DBFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2016.05.03180:C(627-639)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2018
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