The new VaultIC150 solution uses NFC to provide manufacturers and buyers of high-end consumer products with proof that an item is the genuine article.
NFC semiconductor and security specialist Inside Secure has introduced VaultIC150, a turnkey security solution designed to deliver protection to high-end consumer products such as handbags, wines, clothing and watches that are often targeted by counterfeiters and cloners.
Producers of luxury items that incorporate VaultIC150 chips into their products will be able to track them throughout the distribution process, as well as through retail channels, allowing consumers with NFC phones to verify that the product is an original and not a counterfeit.
“Counterfeiting and cloning are taking a tremendous toll on makers of popular high-end brands, not only in lost revenues, but also in jobs lost and company reputation,” says Inside’s Christian Fleutelot. “The VaultIC150 provides these manufacturers with a simple, single-chip solution that provides banking-level security to protect their brands at an attractive price point.”
The VaultIC150 is available in several antenna form factors so that the chip can be deeply embedded into a product without leaving any visible trace of its presence. Each chip includes voltage, frequency, and temperature detectors, illegal code execution prevention, tampering monitors and protection against side-channel attacks and probing. The chips can detect tampering and destroy sensitive data if an attack is attempted, so that data confidentiality is not compromised.
As well as the NFC chip, the solution also includes a software application for NFC phones that Inside Secure provides to product manufacturers. In use, the application sends a random challenge to the VaultIC tag, which then uses a securely stored private key to compute a response. The app can then check this against its own answer, computed using the corresponding public key. If they agree, the product carrying the tag is genuine. If higher levels of security are required, VaultIC150 can also be used as part of a public key infrastucture solution.
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This is the best implementation of NFC I’ve heard of to be honest. This allow anyone with a NFC mobile phone have the ability to quickly verify if a luxury bag is real or not.
Gucci, LVMH and others should take this seriously to protect their IP brand…
It will be interesting to see if brand-conscious consumers continue to use authentication functionality post-purchase — “Of course it’s a real LV — just scan it and see!” or, in the same way as my kids always say to each other ‘pics or it didn’t happen’, “Scan, or it isn’t real.”