SoK: Fighting Counterfeits with Cyber-Physical Synergy Based on Physically-Unclonable Identifiers of Paper Surface

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive framework combining physical unclonable identifiers on paper surfaces with digital security measures to combat counterfeiting across supply chains, analyzing challenges and proposing best practices.

Contribution

It unifies physical unclonable identifiers with digital security in a systematic framework for supply chain anti-counterfeiting, addressing gaps in prior isolated approaches.

Findings

Identified key shortcomings in existing anti-counterfeiting methods.

Developed a stage-wise security analysis inspired by cryptography and signal processing.

Outlined practical challenges and best practices for real-world implementation.

Abstract

Counterfeit products cause severe harm to public safety and health by penetrating untrusted supply chains. Numerous anti-counterfeiting techniques have been proposed, among which the use of inherent, unclonable irregularities of paper surfaces has shown considerable potential as a high-performance economical solution. Prior works do not consider supply chains cohesively, either focusing on creating or improving unclonable identifiers or on securing digital records of products. This work aims to systematically unify these two separate but connected research areas by comprehensively analyzing the needs of supply chains. We construct a generalized paper-based authentication framework and identify important shortcomings and promising ideas in the existing literature. Next, we do a stage-wise security analysis of our consolidated framework by drawing inspiration from works in signal processing, cryptography, and biometric systems. Finally, we examine key representative scenarios that illustrate the range of practical and technical challenges in real-world supply chains, and we outline the best practices to guide future research.