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Extended Abstract: Towards Physical-Layer Authentication for Backscatter Devices

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Computer Security (CyberICPS 2020, SECPRE 2020, ADIoT 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 12501))

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Abstract

Backscatter communications relieves sensor tags from the energy-intensive task of generating their own radio waves. This enables sensor tags to transmit their sensor readings at an energy consumption that is several orders of magnitude lower than that of conventional low-power radios. The resource-constraints of typical backscatter tags, however, make it challenging to provide security for them. In this extended abstract, we take a first step towards authentication of backscatter transmissions. We propose to add authentication information in the chip sequences of the physical layer. We discuss design issues and in particular the trade-off between security and reliability and propose mechanisms to enable low-power authentication suitable for backscatter tags.

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Acknowledgements

This project is financially supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the Swedish Research Council (grants 2017-045989 and 2018-05480).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University Sweden, Uppsala, Sweden

    Thiemo Voigt, Carlos Pérez-Penichet & Christian Rohner

  2. RISE Computer Science, Kista, Sweden

    Thiemo Voigt

Authors
  1. Thiemo Voigt
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  2. Carlos Pérez-Penichet
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  3. Christian Rohner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thiemo Voigt .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway

    Sokratis Katsikas

  2. Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Frédéric Cuppens

  3. Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Nora Cuppens

  4. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Costas Lambrinoudakis

  5. University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece

    Christos Kalloniatis

  6. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

  7. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Annie Antón

  8. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Stefanos Gritzalis

  9. Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Weizhi Meng

  10. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Steven Furnell

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Voigt, T., Pérez-Penichet, C., Rohner, C. (2020). Extended Abstract: Towards Physical-Layer Authentication for Backscatter Devices. In: Katsikas, S., et al. Computer Security. CyberICPS SECPRE ADIoT 2020 2020 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12501. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-64329-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-64330-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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