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RFID tags and their related wireless infrastructure provide the Department of Defense with one of the most advanced logistical networks around the world. The Army In-Transit Visibility (ITV) is a comprehensive world-wide logistics platform that provides near real-time data suitable for planning all aspects of logistics operations through the extensive deployment of active (battery-powered) RFID tags. However, the constrained computational resources found in the typical RFID platform have made the delivery of any authentication or data security a challenge and a key constraint is the battery power available in a tag.

Security threats to current RFID systems include clandestine scanning, tracking, cloning, and eavesdropping. Unprotected tags can be scanned to obtain detailed data on the tagged asset or simply used to track the asset the tag is attached to - and when these tags are in a war theater the results can be deadly.

SecureRF is developing a lightweight multi-stream encryption (LIME) method to provide both authentication and data encryption functions for the RFID infrastructure currently used in the Department of Defense AIT. Our system provides a smaller footprint on low-end hardware implementations, higher encryption speed, smaller input/output delay and simpler protocols for handling small or variable size inputs. Most important, our solutions will provide critical security to our fighting forces today.