International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)

Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com

Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 159


Abstract - Intelligent Tags are built with important
information that is generally communicated with remote
HOST. Tags are fragile that they can be tampered through
different types of physical and logical attacks. The TAGS
must be provided with built-in intelligence to sense external
tampering and provide alerting either locally or remotely
through hand held devices so that preventive actions can be
taken and the Tags can be secured. Many types of sensing
mechanisms are to be provided for sensing different types of
tampering, making the Tagging system complicated. This
paper presents a unified mechanism through which any type
of tampering is sensed and the same is communicated to the
neighborhood of the embedded system or to a remote hand
held device.

Key words: Intelligent Tags, Tampering, attacking Tags,
alerting, communicating tags, tamper proofing, sensors,
physical and logical attacks.

1. INTRODUCTION
Tags are being used for many purposes which include location
tracing, object identification alerting the changes taking place in
the neighborhood of the Tags, Power management,
communicating with the HOST, securing the communication
with the HOST, location management etc. As the Tags are made
more intelligent from day to day, they are prone to variety of
attacks making the tags ineffective leading to loss of
information stored in the TAGS.

Tampering the intelligent tags can be undertaken by several
ways which include destroying, twisting, blocking the
communication ports, destroying or altering the data, disturbing
the communication channels, disturbing the functioning of the
Tag by code manipulation which effect the functions like
beeping, power management, efficient communication with the
HOST device, memory management etc. Some of the attacks
such as tag removal, tag destruction, etc., make the tags
permanently disabled. Some other attacks degrade the operation
of the TAG.

Every Tag has many components in it which include the
wireless medium, side channel, reader, transmitter etc. A tag
can be attacked through affecting any of the components
situated on the TAG. Tags can also be attacked through light,
ultraviolet rays, ionizing radiation, probing etc.

The TAGS must be provided with built-in intelligence to sense
external tampering either through physical or logical attacks.
Some more devices should be added to embedded systems like
capacitive sensors (pressure sensors, push to on switches),
tamper proof stickers, tamper proof shields and many more in
order to protect the tag from physical hackers.

The incidences of tampering can be studied through theses
sensing devices and a system of alerting shall help in protecting
the TAGS from external tampering. It is necessary to alert the
LOCAL user and the remote user when attempts to tampering
take place. Communication between the TAGS and the remote
Mobile phone is required for alerting the user of the TAG when
attempts to tamper the TAG take place. It is necessary to
investigate the methods with which tampering could be
recognized and alerting the user could be implemented.

Some considerations in tamper proofing an intelligent tag might
include:
Identify who a potential tamperer might be and what
level of knowledge, materials, tools, etc. might they
have.
Identify all feasible methods of unauthorized access into
a product, package, or system. In addition to the primary
means of entry, also consider secondary or "back door"
methods.
Control or limit access to products or systems of interest.
Improve the tamper resistance by making tampering
more difficult, time-consuming, etc.
Add tamper-evident features to help indicate the
existence of tampering.

Every tag thus, must be protected from tampering. Several
technologies are being used for tamper proofing of the tags and
use of more technologies for protecting the tags from different
types of attacks makes the tagging system more complex. The
tamper proofing system must be simple and unified approach is
required for tamper proofing of the tags from different types of
attacks.

2. RELATED WORK
Tamper proofing through inclusion of capacitive sensors has
been attempted [1]. Capacitive sensors can be constructed for
tamper resistant enclosures to prevent unauthorized intrusions.
A printed circuit provides serpentine geometric patterns of
conductors. Any penetration of this envelope interferes with the
conductive serpentine, producing a detectable warning of
intrusion. Capacitive sensors have been presented as suitable
for implementing in the area of physical security cryptographic
modules. These sensors conform to Levels 3 and 4 of the
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).

Digital watermarking scheme for tamper proofing has also been
attempted [2]. Digital watermarking in multimedia is a method
of putting information on the document, picture or video such
that it can be protected from manipulation and duplication. This
technology is promising for RFID tamper detection. The method
dealing with watermarking is used for tamper detection in RFID
Tags and tamper detection in the RFID data stream. The method
used for tamper detection has some unique features. For
example, the embedded watermark is imperceptible. It also
prevents illegal embedding and verification; so only an
authorized person who has a key can embed, extract and verify
watermarks. Furthermore, it uses blind verification in which the
Tamper Proofing of the Tags through
Pressure Sensing

Dr. JKR Sastry
1
, and Dr. A. Vinya Babu
2

1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, KL University

2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, J NTU Hyderabad
International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 160


original unmarked data should not be required for watermark
verification. Watermarks can also help in getting information
like the location at which it is altered. It also helps in detecting
the kind of alteration that has been done.

Tamper proofing can also be used through a method around the
standard of logical memory map of ISO/IEC 18000-6 type C[3].
An RFID Tags memory is typically divided into four memory
banks. The idea proposed in this method is based on a scheme
called the bank level locking scheme. In this scheme, one of the
sections in the memory bank is locked. An idea has been
proposed for recording into a specially designed area of the
memory where only the TAG itself can write. Readers can only
read that area but cannot write. Whenever there is any write
operation on the TAG, it writes it into the Tags write only area.
This allows tracking of tampering. If a malicious user tries to
tamper with the data then it will be written into the TAG write
only part and upon reading by a genuine reader it will be
retrieved. Middleware will read the write and detect any
tampering if done.

TAG authentication scheme [4] called TAG-AUTH is used to
prevent TAG cloning. This authentication mechanism relies on
the high security and computation at the back-end side and
allows for less computation in the TAG itself. It uses TAG ID, a
secret key stored in TAG and a virtual ID. This virtual TAG ID
is only communicated to the reader. The back-end server
decrypts the virtual TAG to get the valid TAG ID.

An anomaly-based system to detect TAG cloning for tamper
proofing has been attempted [5]. The idea is to monitor users
behavior on a daily basis and compare it with current activity in
real time. Since each individuals behavior is different and
almost unique we can build a different profile for each user.
The RFID Tags audit record is used to build a profile for
normal behavior, which can be used to determine when there is
a significant change or deviation in normal behavior. When an
anomalous behavior is detected, it triggers an alarm and flags a
security breach.

Physical layer fingerprints of RFID transponders for cloning
detection [6] are also used for tamper proofing. The method
proposed by them is based on spectral features of response
signal and modulation shape generated by transponders for in
and out reader signals. The authors have tested it on fifty RFID
smart cards and found uniqueness of patterns in the physical
layer fingerprints.

The recent Surveys [7] show that there is no silver bullet
solution that can be applied to every application. It has
compared many approaches but at the end it indicates that
authentication needs to be specific to the application area. Also,
it indicates that further research is needed in the area of offline
authentication and network issues.

Encryption technique against tracking and cloning is one of the
method used for tamper proofing [8]. The TAG rotates
pseudonyms from time to time in order to respond to a query.
An authentic reader would share the pseudonyms in advance
such that it would be the only reader to track it consistently. If
an attacker reader is querying constantly then reader would
either slow down the response or it will go to sleep. However,
these techniques would require lot of calculation for an RFID
chip.

A tamper proofing method that combines a set of methods has
been proposed [9] that have been used previously individually
for tamper proofing of a TAG as all the methods together forms
a full proof system. The method proposed by them considers
the conversion of any type of tampering into pressure
equivalence and based on the amount of pressure exerted
appropriate alerting has been initiated through an alerting
system.

Software architecture for implementing an efficient tamper
proofing method for alerting the local and remote user about the
tampering taking place in and around the TAG has been
presented [10]. The architecture is efficient that any of the
embedded systems can implement the same.

3. HARDWARE ASSEMBLY
The Hardware architecture that is used for assembling the
embedded hardware is shown in the Figure I. The embedded
board which is designed around ARM7 technology is shown in
the Figure II. The interconnection between hardware devices
forms the hardware design related to intelligent tag Tamper
sensing system. ARM 7 acts as main controller to which most of
the devices are interfaced directly through various busses. To
the main bus which is AHP Bus, VLSI Peripheral bus and Local
bus are connected. To the VLSI bus GPIO bus and I
2
C bus are
connected. The devices are connected to the busses.
External memory which is EEPROM is connected via I
2
C Bus.
Three devices are used for establishing communication in
different communication modes. While Bluetooth module is
connected through USB (Universal serial bus) to the
microcontroller through VLSI bus. Similarly the Wi-Fi is
connected to the microcontroller through UART01 and VLSI
bus. GPS is connected to microcontroller UART02 and VLSI
bus. LCD, LEDs, Keypad, Buzzer, Beeper, reset gate are
connected to the Micro controller through GPIO and VLSI Bus.
LCD, and LEDs are used to alert local operator about the kind
of tampering that has taken place. The microcontroller is loaded
with ES application which provides a tamper proofing system.
The ES application keep sensing the presser exerted through I
2
C
communication method and translates the pressure to the kind
of tampering that has taken place on the Intelligent Tag. The
sensor is pressurized every time any kind of pressure is exerted
on the ES board. The tampering that has been decoded from the
Pressure which is read through A/D converter to which the
pressure sensor is connected is displayed on the LCD as text or
by buzzing a buzzer, or through beeping a beeper and by
sending an SMS message to the HOST through Bluetooth
device or through WiFi device.

4. SOFTWARE ASSEMBLY
The embedded software assembly undertaken using of C++
language is shown in the Figure III. A separate class has been
used to model every device that is connected to the micro
controller, all the functions required to drive the devices are
contained in the classes related to the respective devices.

The Tamper proof control class has functions to read the input
provided by either pressure sensor or Push to ON/OFF switches.
The Tamper proof class translates the pressure into the kind of
tampering and the device on which the tampering has been
effected. The tamper proof class also determines the kind of
alerting that must be made based on the device on which the
tampering has been initiated. The output on to LCD or Buzzer
or beeper is affected by initiating functions of the classes that
are related to those devices. The communication control class is
International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 161


used to send the SMS to a remote hand held device either
through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi device based on the arbitration that
undertakes with the remote host for transmitting message.


Figure I: Hardware assembly of Tamper sensing system


Figure II: the Embedded Board related to tamper sensing
system
5. EXPERIMENTATION
Experiments are conducted by writing a small software
class resident in each of the module. Within the tamper
proofing system the data transmitted by pressure sensor
and the push-to-on sensor is processed by the Main
control of temper proofing system. The alerts that are to
be communicated as a consequence of tampering are
transmitted to the alerting system. The alerting system
either alerts the local neighborhood through LCD, LED
or beeper or the remote mobile devices through either
Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Communication. Various types of
Tampering on the ES board have been tried that include
application of physical pressure on the board, attacking
through side channels by creation of magnetic field of
certain strength, creation of a thirstier, short circuiting
the input supply, inducing additional current into input
supply etc. of known strengths in Pascals and watching
and recording the outputs through data written on LCD,
Buzzing pattern, beeping sequence and the type of
message transmitted through either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
interface.
The experimental results noticed are shown in Table I. It
can be seen from the table specific pressure is exerted
when a specific type of tampering is initiated. The
alerting of the occurrence of the pressure has been
implemented either through SIMS message, or triggering
a buzzer or causing a beeping pattern. The alerting of
occurrence of tampering is displayed on the LCD as
shown in the Figure IV.


Figure IV: Mobile side output
Alert can be sent to HOST and the alert message can be
displayed on the smart screen as shown in figure V.


Figure V: Mobile side output
6. CONCLUSIONS
Protecting the intelligent TAGS is absolutely necessary
for different types of attacks to preserve the safety of the
same. The TAGS must be intelligent that it can sense that
some kind of tampering is being attempted and the
attempting to tamper must be broadcasted to the Local
environment and to a remote location where the master of
the TAG is resident.
TAGS can be tampered in many ways. Building several
mechanisms for sensing and monitoring each type of
tamper is complex and the solutions even if provided
would be cumbersome. A unified solution is necessary
considering any type of Tampering on the TAG.
International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com
Volume 3, Issue 3, May-June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856

Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 162


Any type of tampering can be represented in terms of
pressure and the amount of pressure exerted can be used
to indicate the kind of tampering that has taken place so
that alerting of the same can be made to broadcast locally
and to a remotely situated handheld device.
The tamper proofing system has been integrated with an
alerting system. The method is capable of locating, the
type of tampering of the tag and the device on which
tampering is attempted.
Testing of the system has been carried and the test results
justify the concept of unified tamper detection system.
Thus sensing any type of tampering through the exertion
of the presser on the pressure senor is excellent method as
any type of tampering can be represented in terms of
pressuer.

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Figure III: ES software Class diagram

Table I: Tampering related experimental results