Authentication Based Solutions to Counterfeiting of Manufactured Goods
This addresses identity theft and intellectual property protection for manufacturers, but appears incremental as it adapts existing digital signature concepts to physical goods.
The paper tackles counterfeiting of manufactured goods by proposing authentication solutions analogous to digital signatures, with specific methods for goods like pharmaceutical drugs and currencies, but does not provide concrete results or numbers.
Counterfeiting of manufactured goods is presented as the theft of intellectual property, patents, copyright etc. accompanied by identity theft. The purpose of the identity theft is to facilitate the intellectual property theft. Without it the intellectual property theft would be obvious and the products would be confiscated and destroyed. Authentication solutions, to prevent identity theft, were then developed for the two categories of manufactured goods i.e. goods which can be subjected to destructive screening strategies and goods which cannot e.g. pharmaceutical drugs and currencies, respectively. The solutions developed were found to be analogous to digital signatures. Tamper proof packaging on pharmaceutical drugs is analogous to encryption because it prevents Mallory from interfering with the product. Breaking the tamper proof packaging is a one-way function. Concealed inside the packaging a one-time password, which can be used to authenticate the product over the internet. The name of the authentication website must be common knowledge, just like a public key for authenticating digital signatures. Otherwise the counterfeiters will specify their own authentication website. This solution can be altered for currencies i.e. the one-way function, equivalent to opening the tamper proof packaging, becomes the method of manufacture of the currency.