A Lightweight Authentication Protocol for RFID-Assisted Supply Chain Management System

In the evolving landscape of supply chain management, the integration of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has marked a significant milestone. This development has led to the emergence of a new system in RFID-based supply chain management, which is intricately linked with the advances in the Internet of Things (IoT). RFID technology employs electromagnetic fields to identify and track tags on objects and revolutionizes the management and tracking of items in the supply chain. However, the public communication among RFID tags, RFID readers, and supply chain infrastructure predominantly escalates security and privacy challenges. Several authentication protocols have been proposed to overcome these challenges. However, the vulnerability of most proposed protocols to numerous security attacks renders them inefficient. Therefore, to address these crucial challenges, we devised an RFID-based authentication protocol for supply chain management systems. The incorporation of a physically unclonable function (PUF) into the protocol fortifies the system against physical tampering attacks. To validate the security and effectiveness of the devised protocol, both informal and formal security analysis are conducted. The formal security analysis is conducted using the widely used random oracle model. The informal security analysis reveals that the devised protocol provides enhanced and efficient security features. Furthermore, we perform a comparative analysis with related protocols, focusing on critical performance metrics like communication cost, computation cost, and overall security features. The results of the comparative analysis are promising, indicating a substantial 30.92% reduction in computational cost and a 23.98% reduction in communication cost in comparison to related protocols, thus highlighting the protocol’s superior performance and resource efficiency.