Joan Melià-Seguí

Understanding the Limits of LoRaWAN

Low-power wide area networking technology offers long-range communication, which enables new types of services. Several solutions exist; LoRaWAN is arguably the most adopted. It promises ubiquitous connectivity in outdoor IoT applications, while keeping network structures and management simple. This technology has received a lot of attention in recent months from network operators and solution providers. However, the technology has limitations that need to be clearly understood to avoid inflated expectations and disillusionment. This article provides an impartial and fair overview of the capabilities and limitations of LoRaWAN. We discuss those in the context of use cases, and list open research and development questions.

Analysis and improvement of a pseudorandom number generator for EPC Gen2 tags

The EPC Gen2 is an international standard that proposes the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the supply chain. It is designed to balance cost and functionality. The development of Gen2 tags faces, in fact, several challenging constraints such as cost, compatibility regulations, power consumption, and performance requirements. As a consequence, security on board of Gen2 tags is often minimal. It is, indeed, mainly based on the use of on board pseudorandomness. This pseudorandomness is used to blind the communication between readers and tags; and to acknowledge the proper execution of password-protected operations. Gen2 manufacturers are often reluctant to show the design of their pseudorandom generators. Security through obscurity has always been ineffective. Some open designs have also been proposed. Most of them fail, however, to prove their correctness. We analyze a recent proposal presented in the literature and demonstrate that it is, in fact, insecure.We propose an alternative mechanism that fits the Gen2 constraints and satisfies the security requirements.

J3Gen: A PRNG for Low-Cost Passive RFID

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) is the main security tool in low-cost passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies, such as EPC Gen2. We present a lightweight PRNG design for low-cost passive RFID tags, named J3Gen. J3Gen is based on a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) configured with multiple feedback polynomials. The polynomials are alternated during the generation of sequences via a physical source of randomness. J3Gen successfully handles the inherent linearity of LFSR based PRNGs and satisfies the statistical requirements imposed by the EPC Gen2 standard. A hardware implementation of J3Gen is presented and evaluated with regard to different design parameters, defining the key-equivalence security and nonlinearity of the design. The results of a SPICE simulation confirm the power-consumption suitability of the proposal.

A Practical Implementation Attack on Weak Pseudorandom Number Generator Designs for EPC Gen2 Tags

The Electronic Product Code Generation 2 (EPC Gen2) is an international standard that proposes the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the supply chain. It is designed to balance cost and functionality. As a consequence, security on board of EPC Gen2 tags is often minimal. It is, indeed, mainly based on the use of on board pseudorandomness, used to obscure the communication between readers and tags; and to acknowledge the proper execution of password-protected operations. In this paper, we present a practical implementation attack on a weak pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) designed specifically for EPC Gen2 tags. We show that it is feasible to eavesdrop a small amount of pseudorandom values by using standard EPC commands and using them to determine the PRNG configuration that allows to predict the complete output sequence.

Multiple-polynomial LFSR based pseudorandom number generator for EPC Gen2 RFID tags

We present a lightweight pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) design for EPC Gen2 RFID tags. It is based on a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) configured with multiple feedback polynomials that are selected by a physical source of randomness. The proposal successfully handles the inherent linearity of LFSR based PRNGs and satisfies the statistical requirements imposed by the EPC Gen2 standard. Statistical analysis of the sequences generated by our generator confirms the validity of the proposed technique.We show that our proposal has, moreover, a simpler hardware implementation and energy consumption than previous designs reported in the literature.

Cricking: customer-product interaction in retail using pervasive technologies

The popularization of eCommerce has led to effective customer shopping experiences. Pervasive computing could bring the benefits of eCommerce to brick and mortar stores, merging both online and physical worlds into a unique system. We define crick as the extension of the (c)lick and b(rick) concept, by means of pervasive technologies. In this paper, we summarize our work-in-progress research on using pervasive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to sense human-product interaction. These cricks can be performed through diverse interfaces in the retail domain, and automatically receive feedback in different manners. We believe that integrating RFID and other pervasive technologies in retail stores is the next step to obtain comprehensive customers user models and preferences. Retail management improvement, or personal and collaborative recommendations, are envisioned to be successful applications of cricking.

CUIDATS: An RFID–WSN hybrid monitoring system for smart health care environments

Abstract The continuous development and improvement of low-power wireless communication technologies is enabling the emergence of many new applications in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the main areas of research within the Smart City context is smart health, which engages novel IoT initiatives to improve both quality and access to health care and smart services in general. In this paper we present CUIDATS, an IoT hybrid monitoring system for health care environments which integrates RFID and WSN technologies in a single platform providing location, status, and tracking of patients and assets. After its performance validation in a suitable testbed, CUIDATS has been deployed and evaluated with a high degree of success in a real hospital.

Activity duration analysis for context-aware services using foursquare check-ins

Location-based Social Networks (LBSN) such as Foursquare are becoming an increasingly popular social media, where users share their location and activities with other users mainly using smartphones and Internet of Things. Data logged by LBSNs, such as Foursquare user check-in events, can be used to derive user models and improve the context-awareness and efficiency of various applications like recommender systems. In particular, activity duration is one important aspect of user behavior that we can derive from LBSNs to improve the timing of recommendation sent to users. These durations are not otherwise directly available from LBSNs, partial GPS-enabled tracking or explicit recording due to various practical constraints. From a Four-square dataset with about 3.7 million users and 300 million check-ins, we observed patterns which inspired us to design methods to determine the duration of user activities. We discuss preliminary results and outline plans for thorough evaluations and future research.

Using Augmented Reality and Internet of Things to improve accessibility of people with motor disabilities in the context of Smart Cities

Abstract Smart Cities need to be designed to allow the inclusion of all kinds of citizens. For instance, motor disabled people like wheelchair users may have problems to interact with the city. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies provide the tools to include all citizens in the Smart City context. For example, wheelchair users may not be able to reach items placed beyond their arm’s length, limiting their independence in everyday activities like shopping, or visiting libraries. We have developed a system that enables wheelchair users to interact with items placed beyond their arm’s length, with the help of Augmented Reality (AR) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies. Our proposed system is an interactive AR application that runs on different interfaces, allowing the user to digitally interact with the physical items on the shelf, thanks to an updated inventory provided by an RFID system. The resulting experience is close to being able to browse a shelf, clicking on it and obtaining information about the items it contains, allowing wheelchair users to shop independently, and providing autonomy in their everyday activities. Fourteen wheelchair users with different degrees of impairment have participated in the study and development of the system. The evaluation results show promising results towards more independence of wheelchair users, providing an opportunity for equality improvement.

Security and Privacy Concerns About the RFID Layer of EPC Gen2 Networks

RFID systems are composed by tags (also known as electronic labels) storing an identification sequence which can be wirelessly retrieved by an interrogator, and transmitted to the network through middleware and database information systems. In the case of the EPC Gen2 technology, RFID tags are not provided with on-board batteries. They are passively powered through the radio frequency waves of the interrogators. Tags are also assumed to be of low-cost nature, meaning that they shall be available at a very reduced price (predicted for under 10 US dollar cents in the literature). The passive and low-cost nature of EPC Gen2 tags imposes several challenges in terms of power consumption and integration of defense countermeasures. Like many other pervasive technologies, EPC Gen2 might yield to security and privacy violations if not handled properly. In this chapter, we provide an in-depth presentation of the RFID layer of the EPC Gen2 standard. We also provide security and privacy threats that can affect such a layer, and survey some representative countermeasures that could be used to handle the reported threats. Some of the reported efforts were conducted within the scope of the ARES project.