Patent ID: 8154405

Claim:
A protocol for safeguarding the security of radio frequency identification (RFID) communications between an RFID base station and an RFID tag to provide protection against an unauthorized communication, the protocol comprising: conducting by the tag and the base station a first process of mutually authenticating the tag and the base station as being authorized to participate in a series of transactions, said process of mutually authenticating operating on a first random number generated by the tag, a second random number generated by the reader and a key stored by the tag and the reader; and using a second process differing from the first process to separately verify the authenticity of the base station before each transaction in the series of transactions wherein the tag determines whether the base station is authentic by comparing a base station authentication code generated by the base station and a tag authentication code generated by the tag, the base station authentication code being appended to an unencrypted base station message for instructing the tag to perform a tag operation wherein said base station authentication code and said tag authentication code are based on said first or second random numbers or said key.