|
25.08.2008 
Thanks to a new forgery-proof radio frequency identification (RFID) chip developed
by Siemens, life is about to become a whole lot more difficult for product pirates.
Exploiting a technology similar to that used for a digital signature, the chip is
able to verify its own authenticity and thus that of the product to which it is
attached. The chip can also be used to store other information such as the product’s
designation of origin and serial number. Unauthorized reading or copying of the
data on the chip is impossible. Siemens has recently unveiled initial prototypes
of this new chip.
There is a large range of potential applications for RFID chips. In supermarkets,
for example, these centimeter-long tags can be used in place of barcodes to store
product data and communicate this information, by means of an integrated transmitter,
to a reader device. Other areas include the control of access to buildings and the
monitoring of container movements. On the other hand, the greater the number of
applications for these chips, the greater the risk of misuse — mainly in the form
of unauthorized interception of data being transmitted from a chip to a reader
device. In some cases, this information is then written onto a blank RFID tag
in order to clone the original chip.
Siemens Corporate Technology has therefore developed a secure authentication process
for RFID chips, which is based on public key cryptography. Here, the chip encodes
a query from the reader device with its own private key. The receiver is then able
to verify the correctness of the answer to this query by means of the matching
public key — a process that takes a mere tenth of a second.
In the past, this kind of process was unsuitable for small RFID chips on account
of insufficient processing capacity and a lack of power supply. With the help of
enhanced algorithms, however, Siemens researchers have now succeeded in substantially
reducing the processing power required. At the same time, in place of a programmable
processor they have now used fixed, nonprogrammable circuit components. In this
way they have been able to reduce not only energy consumption but also chip size —
a major cost factor in this technology.
These forgery-proof chips are intended for use primarily in areas where the need
to prevent product piracy is greatest. This includes the markets for medicinal
drugs, high-quality fashion clothing, and spare parts for vehicles and machinery.
|
