. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a rapidly upcoming
technology that has become more and more important also in securityrelated
applications. In this article, we discuss the impact of faults on this
kind of devices. We have analyzed conventional passive RFID tags from
different vendors operating in the High Frequency (HF) and Ultra-High
Frequency (UHF) band. First, we consider faults that have been enforced
globally affecting the entire RFID chip. We have induced faults caused
by temporarily antenna tearing, electromagnetic interferences, and optical
inductions. Second, we consider faults that have been caused locally
using a focused laser beam. Our experiments have led us to the result
that RFID tags are exceedingly vulnerable to faults during the writing
of data that is stored into the internal memory. We show that it is possible
to prevent the writing of this data as well as to allow the writing of
faulty values. In both cases, tags confirm the operation to be successful.
We conclude that fault analysis poses a serious threat in this context
and has to be considered if cryptographic primitives are embedded into
low-cost RFID tags.