An Overview of Cryptography

Abstract

As Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices become ever more ubiquitous it is very likely that demands on them to provide certain types of security such as authentication, confidentiality, and privacy and encryption for security, depending on the application, will increase. This chapter gives a brief overview of cryptographic techniques and protocols. Given the often limited complexity and power of RFID devices, much effort has been devoted to devising so-called “lightweight” cryptographic techniques for such devices, and a few of these are considered in this chapter. Even public key techniques to provide services such as identification and digital signatures have been proposed for some scenarios involving RFID devices, although such devices will obviously require significant computing power. While such applications are seemingly beyond currently available technology, given the speed at which technology is able to yield computational increases at reasonable cost and device size, it seems prudent to consider such protocols at this point.