Counterfeit products, particularly pharmaceuticals, electronic devices, and apparels, are widespread. They threaten consumer safety and cause huge economic losses to licit supply chain partners and governments. Although a number of traditional anti-counterfeiting technologies, such as holograms and chemical tags, are available to combat counterfeiting, they are vulnerable to imitation or being reused. Besides, these technologies are intended to protect individual items, rather than to safeguard an entire supply chain. As such, fake products may likely be injected into the supply chain to hurt end-consumers. Track-and-trace technology based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has recently emerged as a promising tool to combat counterfeiting, because of its automatic and non-line-of-sight capability to identify massive product items. By maintaining an electronic pedigree (e-pedigree) that records the transaction information of product items along the supply chain, this approach stands out for protecting the supply chain against infiltration, eliminating theft and fraud, facilitating recall of defective products, and supporting remote authentication. However, a number of technical and critical issues have yet to be solved for practical implementation of RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. These include generation of accurate initial product e-pedigree in fast moving manufacturing lines, precise e-pedigree updating in batch product distributing and receiving, and fast e- pedigree queries for remote and real-time product authentication from end-customers. Without fully addressing these issues, the accumulated product e-pedigree data would be untrustworthy, rendering any subsequent operations of track-and-trace and product authentication unreliable. This thesis investigates the crucial implementation issues in RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. It firstly presents an innovative track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting system, based on which a TDPS algorithm is proposed for generation of initial product e-pedigree in fast moving production lines. The TDPS overcomes many practical issues, such as tag writing error and tag locking failure, and helps identify the bottleneck of initial product e-pedigree generation. To tackle the bottleneck, the TDPS is further optimized by incorporating a block writing method to enhance the tag EPC writing efficiency and an integration method to balance the overhead of RFID equipment. In product distributing and receiving, a mechanized 3D scanning method is proposed to improve bulk item identification rate and enhance the accuracy and completeness of product e-pedigree. Indeed, RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting mandates a relatively high bulk item identification rate for product authentication and e-pedigree updating. Experimental results demonstrate that the mechanized 3D scanning can achieve a bulk item reading rate of up to 98.9%, which largely outperforms the widely documented bulk reading rate (70%) in real applications. In retailing level, the efficiency of e-pedigree queries would hugely impact on customer shopping experience and the effectiveness of track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. A partition-based method is therefore developed to cluster product e-pedigree data to improve the speed of e-pedigree queries. This approach partitions the accumulated e-pedigree data into fixed and dynamic groups, such that queries are conducted mainly on active data, rather than on the whole historical data sets. By addressing the above key issues, this thesis contributes to making implementation of RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting practically viable and reliable. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging area under ubiquitous computing. RFID benefits include multiple read/write, longer read range and no requirement for line of sight. Due to security and privacy issues, RFID is not as popular as it should be. Tag cloning is one of the biggest threats to RFID systems. Easy access to RFID tags allows an attacker to replicate the tags and insert duplicate tags into the system. An RFID tag cloning attack can lead to access control or financial frauds in areas like supply chain management and government issued IDs. In this thesis, a cloning prevention protocol is proposed. It uses light weight functions such as Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) and compare function. A 3-way handshake with a secret key, frequency hopping mechanism and dynamic fake ID makes this protocol a secure authentication mechanism.

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a wireless communications technology which allows companies to secure their assets and increase the portability of information. This research was motivated by the increased commercial use of RFID technology. Existing security protocols with high levels of security have high computation requirements, and less intensive protocols can allow a tag to be tracked. The techniques proposed in this thesis result in the increase of ciphertexts available without a significant increase in processing power or storage requirements. The addition of random inputs to the generation of ciphertexts will increase the number of possible results without requiring a more advanced encryption algorithm or an increased number of stored encryption keys. Four methods of altering the plaintext/ciphertext pair (random block, set pattern, random pattern, and indexed placement) are analyzed to determine the effectiveness of each method. The number of ciphertexts generated, generation time, and generation errors were recorded to determine which of the four proposed methods would be the most beneficial in a RFID system. The comparison of these method characteristics determined that the set pattern placement method provided the best solution. The thesis also discusses how RFID transmissions appear to attackers and explains how the random inputs reduce effectiveness of current system attacks. In addition to improving the anonymity of RFID tag transmissions, the concept of authenticating random inputs is also introduced in this thesis. These methods help prevent an adversary from easily associating a tag with its transmissions, thus increasing the security of the RFID system.

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2006. / Thesis Advisor(s): Ha, Tri T. ; Su, Weilian. "December 2006." Description based on title screen as viewed on March 12, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-56). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72). Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (M.S.)--Michigan State University. School of Packaging, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 17, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-223). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering." Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-48).

Thesis (MCIS - Computer and Information Sciences) -- AUT University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (xii, 126 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 621.384191 ZHE)

Thesis (M. S.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Durgin, Gregory; Committee Member: Ingram, Mary Ann; Committee Member: Nikitin, Pavel; Committee Member: Peterson, Andrew; Committee Member: Steffes, Paul.

Thesis (MCIS - Computer and Information Sciences) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (ix, 98, xxvi leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. + 1 cd-rom) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 526 TSA)