Exposing Vulnerabilities in Counterfeit Prevention Systems Utilizing Physically Unclonable Surface Features

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Nakra, Anirudh, Rashid, Nayeeb, Wong, Chau-Wai, Wu, Min
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866912756273250304
author Nakra, Anirudh
Rashid, Nayeeb
Wong, Chau-Wai
Wu, Min
author_facet Nakra, Anirudh
Rashid, Nayeeb
Wong, Chau-Wai
Wu, Min
contents Counterfeit products pose significant risks to public health and safety through infiltrating untrusted supply chains. Among numerous anti-counterfeiting techniques, leveraging inherent, unclonable microscopic irregularities of paper surfaces is an accurate and cost-effective solution. Prior work of this approach has focused on enabling ubiquitous acquisition of these physically unclonable features (PUFs). However, we will show that existing authentication methods relying on paper surface PUFs may be vulnerable to adversaries, resulting in a gap between technological feasibility and secure real-world deployment. This gap is investigated through formalizing an operational framework for paper-PUF-based authentication. Informed by this framework, we reveal system-level vulnerabilities across both physical and digital domains, designing physical denial-of-service and digital forgery attacks to disrupt proper authentication. The effectiveness of the designed attacks underscores the strong need for security countermeasures for reliable and resilient authentication based on paper PUFs. The proposed framework further facilitates a comprehensive, stage-by-stage security analysis, guiding the design of future counterfeit prevention systems. This analysis delves into potential attack strategies, offering a foundational understanding of how various system components, such as physical features and verification processes, might be exploited by adversaries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_09150
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exposing Vulnerabilities in Counterfeit Prevention Systems Utilizing Physically Unclonable Surface Features
Nakra, Anirudh
Rashid, Nayeeb
Wong, Chau-Wai
Wu, Min
Cryptography and Security
Signal Processing
Counterfeit products pose significant risks to public health and safety through infiltrating untrusted supply chains. Among numerous anti-counterfeiting techniques, leveraging inherent, unclonable microscopic irregularities of paper surfaces is an accurate and cost-effective solution. Prior work of this approach has focused on enabling ubiquitous acquisition of these physically unclonable features (PUFs). However, we will show that existing authentication methods relying on paper surface PUFs may be vulnerable to adversaries, resulting in a gap between technological feasibility and secure real-world deployment. This gap is investigated through formalizing an operational framework for paper-PUF-based authentication. Informed by this framework, we reveal system-level vulnerabilities across both physical and digital domains, designing physical denial-of-service and digital forgery attacks to disrupt proper authentication. The effectiveness of the designed attacks underscores the strong need for security countermeasures for reliable and resilient authentication based on paper PUFs. The proposed framework further facilitates a comprehensive, stage-by-stage security analysis, guiding the design of future counterfeit prevention systems. This analysis delves into potential attack strategies, offering a foundational understanding of how various system components, such as physical features and verification processes, might be exploited by adversaries.
title Exposing Vulnerabilities in Counterfeit Prevention Systems Utilizing Physically Unclonable Surface Features
topic Cryptography and Security
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09150