Secure Hardware

Counterfeit goods are a huge problem. Harvard Business Review indicated that there are 5.4 trillion dollars a year in counterfeit goods sold a year.

The questions that need to be addressed are:

1. How to you prove authenticity with some sort of a "device" or "clip" that consumers can easily use.

2. How to protect the privacy of consumers so that devices do not expose the consumer.

3. How to prevent "fake" authentication devices - a proof of authenticity that is just a number that can be looked up is worthless when others duplicate the same number.

4. How to allow the transfer of real goods in after markets. How to re-sell and transfer the "ownership" to the new owner.

The project in the WABL lab is to use strong encryption and a blockchain to implement this.

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Team Members Involved:

Philip Schlump

Dr. Mike Borowczak

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Short Term Goals:

1. Build a full "protocol" demo that uses a Near Field Communication emulator (Android Phone) and a 2nd device running an application (2nd Android Phone) as a pair and demonstrate the security protocol.

2. Do proofs on the protocol that it works.

3. Do proofs that the protocol will not show the identity of the owner of products - but can still verify that the person is the owner when a product changes ownership.

 

Long Term Goals:

1. To have a economy wide system that prevents counterfeiting.

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Successes:

Using a pair of phones, one iPhone and one Android we build a Near Field Communication (NFC) based emulator that demonstrated the version 1 of this protocol. It used a blockchain backing and communicated using the NFC-NDEF protocol.