Tracking based product authentication: Catching intruders in the supply chain

Product counterfeiting is a growing problem worldwide, threatening the health of consumers and reducing company profits. By detecting and intercepting counterfeits before they reach the customer, the problem can be mitigated. In this paper, an approach to detect counterfeit items based on their claimed history is presented. The necessary data is provided by tracking infrastructures that enable the recording and retrieval of movements of individual items in the supply chain based on unique identifiers assigned to products. If the movement history of an item deviates from the movements of genuine items that have been learned before, a warning about a potential counterfeit is issued. Counterfeiter activities that are possible in a tracking enabled environment are modelled and the capability of the proposed approach to detect these strategies is assessed.