Journal of Software Engineering1819-43112152-0941Asian Network for Scientific Information10.3923/jse.2016.263.271Hong-YanKang 32016103In this study an Elliptic Curves Cryptography (ECC)-based tree-structure radio frequency identification (RFID) grouping-proof protocol is proposed to overcome low efficiency and vulnerability to various security threats of existing RFID grouping-proof protocols. Security performance is improved because of the design of the key structure, authentication approaches and procedures for the ECC-based tree-structure RFID grouping-proof protocol. During protocol interaction, grouping-proof efficiency is improved by introducing the tag-reader mutual authentication mechanism to reduce interaction with unauthentic RFID readers and tag computing workload and to complete proof information acquisition with less computation. There are a detailed description and a security analysis of the protocol in this study. As analysis results show, the protocol meets security and privacy requirements. Compared with existing grouping-proof protocols, the proposed protocol is of high efficiency and availability as it brings enhanced security and performance with less computational complexity.]]>Juels, A.,20042004pp: 138143Saito, J. and K. Sakurai,20052005pp: 621624Piramuthu, S.,20062006pp: 317320Burmester, M., B. de Medeiros and R. Motta,20082008pp: 176-190pp: 176-190Hermans, J. and R. Peeters,20132013pp: 96-108pp: 96-108Peris-Lopez, P., A. Orfila, J.C. Hernandez-Castro and J.C.A. van der Lubbe,201134833845Ma, C., J. Lin, Y. Wang and M. Shang,20122012pp: 674681Ham, H., I. Kim and J. Song,20152015pp: 18Lo, N.W. and K.H. Yeh,20102612131230Kang, H.Y.,201339153156Zhang, Z. and Q.L. Xu,20113411881194Duc, D.N., D.M. Konidala, H. Lee and K. Kim,20102222249Lee, Y.K., L. Batina, K. Sakiyama and I. Verbauwhede,20085715141527Batina, L., Y.K. Lee, S. Seys, D. Singelee and I. Verbauwhede,20102010pp: 159-165pp: 159-165Batina, L., Y.K. Lee, S. Seys, D. Singelee and I. Verbauwhede,201216323335Lv, C., H. Li, J. Ma, B. Niu and H. Jiang,20116113119Ko, W.T., S.Y. Chiou, E.H. Lu and H.K.C. Chang,20112011pp: 10621064Lin, Q. and F. Zhang,20123635273531Hermans, J., R. Peeters and B. Preneel,20141328882902Ko, W.T., S.Y. Chiou, E.H. Lu and H.K.C. Chang,20142014Guo, C., Z.J. Zhang, L.H. Zhu, Y.A. Tan and Y. Zhen,20142194103Hermans, J. and R. Peeters,20122012pp: 96108