Smart Ticket Protection: An Architecture for Cyber-Protecting Physical Tickets Using Digitally Signed Random Pattern Markers

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid physical and cryptographic architecture for protecting tickets against forgery by using unforgeable random pattern markers and digital signatures, enabling secure validation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel architecture combining physical randomness with cryptographic protection for ticket validation, including a specific signature layout optimized for size constraints.

Findings

Secure ticket validation with unforgeable markers

Cryptographic protection ensures authenticity

Lightweight system suitable for various durations

Abstract

In order to counter forgeries of tickets for public transport or mass events, a method to validate them, using printed unique random pattern markers was developed. These markers themselves are unforgeable by their physically random distribution. To assure their authenticity, however, they have to be cryptographically protected and equipped with an environment for successful validation, combining physical and cyber security protection. This paper describes an architecture for cryptographically protecting these markers, which are stored in Aztec codes on physical tickets, in order to assure that only an authorized printer can generate a valid Aztec code of such a pattern, thus providing forge protection in combination with the randomness and uniqueness of the pattern. Nevertheless, the choice of the signature algorithm is heavily constrained by the sizes of the pattern, ticket provider data, metadata and the signature confronted by the data volume the code hold. Therefore, this paper also defines an example for a signature layout for the proposed architecture. This allows for a lightweight ticket validation system that is both physically and cryptographically secured to form a smart solution for mass access verification for both shorter to longer periods at relatively low cost.