Digital Forensics in Small Devices: RFID Tag Investigation

security features and challenges (Section 2.4) will be followed by the RFID stock
management security risk (Section 2.5) and conclusion (Section 2.6).
2.1 RFID SYSTEM
RFID (radio frequency identification) is designed to identify the objects or people
by using wireless radio communication (Hunt et al., 2007). As every system has
its own essential component in order to operate successfully, a typical RFID
system is composed of three main components as shown in Figure 2.1. These
components are an RFID tag device, which is sometimes referred to as a
transponder, RFID reader (or transceiver) and a host or controller which is
connected to an enterprise system (Roberts, 2006; Xiao et al., 2007; Hunt et al.,
2007).
Figure 2.1: Block diagram of a typical RFID system (author)
In general, the first stage of how an RFID system works is that the RFID reader
transmits a signal via a radio frequency which is captured by the antenna of the
tag. After the tag transmits its stored data, it is received and decoded by the RFID
reader. Then, the tag‟s data is transferred to the host or controller (Xiao et al.,
2007). To visualize how an RFID system works, it can be seen in the following
Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2: How does RFID work? (Source: www.traze.in/about_rfid.asp, p. 1)
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