PUF-based Smart Tags for Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Counterfeiting represents one of the most widespread phenomena at a global level that indiscriminately affects all product sectors, from fashion to food, from medicines to digital media. The fight against counterfeiting remains a significant challenge for industries. Most of the current supply chains rely on centralized authorities or intermediaries that are not sufficient robust to guarantee anti-counterfeiting and traceability of goods. This paper aims at mitigating these issues by introducing a blockchain-based supply chain for traceability and anti-counterfeiting of goods through Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) and Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based devices, where goods are uniquely identified and tracked along the supply chain so as to trace and detect possible counterfeit. Moreover, the proposed blockchain-based supply chain is decentralized, highly available, and guarantees the integrity of the data stored in it. To assess the validity of the solution two application scenarios have been defined followed by a robustness analysis related to the individual parts that make up the solution.