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Science Technology

Harnessing Subatomic Effects for Product Authentication 50

Posted by timothy from the how-about-a-laundry-pen dept.
Anon writes: "Israeli company Microtag claims to have come up with a way to avoid counterfits, and they mean everything from CDs to clothes to cash to vegetable seeds. Mix several micrograms of their 'magic powder' - which is engineered with a unique identification using the matter's spin - into your product - and later you can verify its authenticity with a relatively low-cost reader. Although their presumption is that no-one else will be able to create this 'magic powder' (which is probably only a matter of time and enough money), an Israeli article claims that Motorola and even the Bank of England are interested in the technology."
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Harnessing Subatomic Effects for Product Authentication More

Harnessing Subatomic Effects for Product Authentication

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  • Karma Suicide!!! (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 )
    After 600+ posts and 20 articles, my karma has been peaked at 50 for what seems like forever now. My new campaign: Karma Suicide!! Every post from now until my karma's back at zero will be this short crapflood posted with my +1 bonus. So moderators: Do your worst! Mod me troll/flame/OT/Overrated/Whatever to get my karma back to where it began. Do this ASAP! And as for the rest of you, commit karma suicide today!

  • I'm sorry sir... (Score:5, Funny)

    by topside420 ( 530370 ) <topside@to[ ]de.org ['psi' in gap]> on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @01:05AM (#2998614) Homepage
    ...but you can't cook that bean in this pot. You can use that pot but that pot wont work with your stove. You may want to call the manufacturer to get that other pot activated for your new stove.

  • Authentication, hell: (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After I take "several micrograms of their 'magic powder,'" everything seems pretty damn real.

    ~~~

  • There is no reason not to try it. I can be duplicated (probably) but so can any other system used, including credit cards, money, etc. If it's not worth it, it won't happen.

    It's a neat idea. It doesn't say on the page, but it seems to imply that it is ready to deploy. WOW! Motorola is manufacturing, and seems to be supplying capital. This could be a huge deal in 1-2 years, since the product is unique and supposedly cheap. Too bad it's not public...

  • A couple example applications (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    o tagging of paper, so thoughts contrary to current political or corporate regimes can be traced back to their source
    o tagging of removable media, so cases of copyright infringment can be linked to the purchaser of the blank CDR
    o tagging of currency, eliminating that pesky tax evasion, drug trade, and prostitution problems often associated with anonymity

    Yes, this seems like wonderful technology. Really.

    ~~~

  • The site is anemic on details, to say the least.

    A few buzzwords, the prefix NANO, and we're all supposed to swoon in awe of them...

    Well, I say BULLSHIT... Unless they cut the crap, put up some details and explain themselves, I'm just going to have to assume this is yet another adventure in security through obscurity. We all know how well that works.

    --Mike--

  • i've heard (un-substanciated) that the feds have been using a system like this for years with the various gunpowders and the lead that goes into bullets in various manufacturer's plants. same for other high-value items such as a) currency and b)nuclear materials....they've just kept reeeeal quiet about it, making it harder to easily duplicate some items, while at the same time, easier to track the origin of certian materials (different chemical markers are used per batch). does anyone know anything more about this? is this why those "explosive chemical" sensor at the airport work so well (supposedly? i've never seen one go off before)
    • Each manufacturing plant, and each production run, is individually identifiable, but not because there is a conspiracy to tag products. They are identifiable because we're surrounded by trace elements, and smelting processes don't remove these trace impurities. Each ore deposit, and in fact each truckload of ore, will have slightly different proportions of these traces; with enough work, you can then track material back to its source.

      IIRC during the cold war the US monitored soviet nuclear tests by measuring the atmospheric proportion of a few carefully chosen isotopes, and could not only work out how many nuclear tests had been performed, but how powerful the explosions were.
      • They are identifiable because we're surrounded by trace elements, and smelting processes don't remove these trace impurities.

        In addition, they keep samples of most every run of powder ever produced so that in the case that powder residue is found at a crime scene, they can run a spectographic analysis and figure out where the powder was manufactured.

        I have heard that most explosives and substances that could be used to produce explosives (certain fertilizers, etc) in the US are tagged with a with a chemical compound. Not sure if it's true, though.

    • There was some talk about requiring manufacturers to use "taggants" back in 1996, in the wake of the McVeigh bombing. There's an article [cnn.com] on it at CNN. It consisted of various-colored microscopic plastic bits.

      The goal was not to detect explosives at a distance, but to be able to identify it after the fact. The usual debates: the NRA, the ATF, etc. It was above board, at the congressional level, not a consipriacy. In the end, nothing came of it.
  • The whole description makes sense if you read "UV" or "light" instead of "RF". Most likely, they are tagging objects with mixtures of fluorescent dyes or pigments--easy to apply, mostly invisible, easy to discriminate using filters, and easy to detect using pulsed UV light sources (perhaps the new UV LEDs). Different mixtures identify different objects, in analogy to visible light taggants.
  • This whole scheme seems like a way to authenticate your data that's been stored on paper.

    For instance, a company can send out shipping and inventory forms with their "key" printed in the ink, which the buyer is wary of. That way, competitor can't falsify forms or orders or somesuch.

    Or, and I think a really interesting application, schools can verify that students have actually turned in their own work. Sure, you can still copy, but there's nothing worse than having Bart Simpson scrawl his name down on your test and get accepted into the special school. =P

  • Motorola interested in the technology. (Score:3, Funny)

    by hkon ( 46756 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @05:08AM (#2999090) Homepage
    Whenever I hear claims of some company being "interested in" some technology, I imagine the following scenario:

    (at trade show)

    salesman: "Hey, we've got a magic powder that we can mix into stuff and do cool stuff with it and stuff"

    joe schmoe:"Yeah, that would be kinda cool if you can make it work. Maybe then I'd even buy some of it for myself"

    salesman:"What company do you work for Sir?"

    joe schmoe:"Motorola. Why do you ask?"
  • With things like bulk petroleum and the like, the manufacturers/refiners insert trace amounts of certain chemical markers that are very easy to detect - iff you know what to look for. If you don't know what to look for, they might as well be tiny quantities of impurities.
    They also use mixtures of chemicals that have different quantities of isotopes to the naturally occuring versions that, once again, are easy to find, but only if you know what to search for and have the right equipment.
    -- kai
  • I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Quantum physics has for too long been the realm of theoreticians. Those math-obsessed introverts who see the beauty in a differential equation, but cannot find out how to make a buck from it.

    Maybe if this quantum-entanglement authenticator takes off, it will lead naturally to quantum computers.

    Imagine how easy it would be to crack strong crypto if you had one of those quantum computers on the case!!!

  • Submolecular not subatomic. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bazzargh ( 39195 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @08:25AM (#2999328)
    The system is clearly based on resonant frequencies of bonds in the molecules of the taggant. They actually say 'submolecular' not subatomic on their site.

    Someone else mentioned that this makes sense if you say UV instead of RF - well that may be true but its hardly new. Here [spectra-science.com] for example is a UV taggant that works on that principal.

    It may well be that their selling point is that they _are_ using RF taggants because its too easy to check if a UV taggant has been applied to something (one of the uses of UV powder tags is to check which employee has touched eg a secure terminal. You have been warned!)

  • It's not really a "new technology"... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bardencj ( 122074 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @10:20AM (#2999658)
    The only thing that's new about this, as far as I can tell, is the low cost deployment. Consider what they do say about it:

    - The technology uses materials with "very unique physical and chemical properties" at the "sub-molecular level."

    - The reader is an RF "transceiver" which can detect the material in a manner analogous to "magnetic resonance imaging."

    Sounds to me like they've build themselves a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer that doesn't have to be very powerful due to bulk effects -- fire some RF at it, stop, then listen.

    There's nothing keeping anyone from using a more powerful NMR spectrometer to isolate the material and reproduce it. So maybe they'd just lobby to have NMR spectroscopy outlawed as a "counterfeiting tool." Security through obscurity reigns...
    • There's nothing keeping anyone from using a more powerful NMR spectrometer to isolate the material and reproduce it.
      Nothing but time, skill, money, and luck. Security isn't about building in impregnable fortress, it's about building walls that stop a few people who would otherwise have just strolled right in. As long as a security measure produces more than it costs, it's a winner.
      Security through obscurity reigns...
      People, stop blindly applying this mantra to everything you come across! Much practical security comes directly from obscurity: passwords only known by a few people and protected against unintended disclosure, metal keys of unknown shapes, PINs that must be used in addition to account numbers, manufacturing processes that would-be attackers don't know how to duplicate, etc.
      • The beauty of most encryption algorithms is that you can pretty much figure out how long it will take someone to crack your key. Because of this it is easy to decide what level of risk you are willing to accept.

        The problem with chemical "keys" as I see it is that there will be two few chemical compounds in any given ink (for the paper case). This makes a brute force attack to discover the key quite feasible using mass spectometry and similar inks.
        How would one calculate the resources necessary to conduct such a brute force attack? This uncertainty will make it difficult to assess what types of things you can logically protect with such a system. It is still pretty cool, and should provide a horrendous deterrant, but before going and protecting anything really valuable like an entire currency supply with it, the risk levels need to be better understood. If the company can't provide information on how easy their taggants are to crack, then they probably are just pulling the old "security by obscurity" trick, and since the compound is physically present, there is no way to prevent a determined attacker from discovering the secret (unlike a password) and once the secret is out, its out.

      • > Security through obscurity reigns...

        People, stop blindly applying this mantra to everything you come across! Much practical security comes directly from obscurity: passwords only known by a few people and protected against unintended disclosure, metal keys of unknown shapes, PINs that must be used in addition to account numbers,

        "Security through obscurity" refers to obscurity of the algorithm, not to the presence of unknown keys, passwords, or PINs. The whole point is that a strong security system is still secure when everything except the key is known, whereas a "security through obscurity" one is compromised (often for all keys) once its inner workings are discovered.
        • "Security through obscurity" refers to obscurity of the algorithm,...
          The original derisive sense referred to the belief that if a security flaw was not publicized, it was harmless and could be ignored. Unfortunately that idea has mutated into a meme that if the details of a technology aren't publicized, it is full of lurking flaws and is therefore worthless.

          My point was that all security comes from obscurity, and not just of digital cryptographic keys. Every enhancement to obscurity in any part of the system makes the system more secure.

          The whole point is that a strong security system is still secure when everything except the key is known,...
          1) True, but keeping the whole thing secret makes it even more secure. Various logistical issues make this expensive to do for practical ciphers, but it's true. 2) Not all security systems are based on symmetric numerical ciphers, and their obscurity equations can be significantly different. In particular, chemical security systems behave as a public key system where even looking at the "public key" (chemical structure) is extremely expensive, nevermind finding a "private key" (synthesis process) that goes with the "public key". Knowledge gained about numerical ciphers does not directly apply to other security methods.

          Moreover, different security systems have different goals. Classical numerical ciphers are intended to provide the highest possible secrecy for numerical data. Anti-counterfeiting systems, on the other hand, are intended to raise the cost of counterfeiting high enough that many potential counterfeiters are stopped.

  • "Call the CDC, there is white powder all over my new cell-phone...." People are scared of baby powder, I don't think anyone wants find out a product contains "Magic Powder" The Anthrax scared has made this unfeasable. Thankfully..
  • When are they going to force us to eat this crap. I'd rather have one of those wildlife tags. At least then, I'll know the truth.

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