Patent ID: 8204225

Claim:
A radio frequency identification (RFID) system, comprising: a plurality of RFID tags; and at least one RFID interrogator, wherein the at least one RFID interrogator comprises: a transmitter configured to wirelessly transmit an interrogation communication to the plurality of tags at a predetermined carrier frequency; a receiver configured to receive a response frequency from the plurality of tags at the predetermined carrier frequency; and a memory, the memory storing a firmware module, the firmware module including a security shim, wherein: the security shim is configured to encrypt at least a portion of the interrogation communication with a first key, the first key being randomly generated for each transmitted communication; the security shim is configured to encrypt the first key with a second key corresponding to a private key stored in a memory of at least one of the plurality of tags; and the transmitter is further configured to transmit the interrogation communication including the at least one encrypted portion and the encrypted first key.