Product authentication using hash chains and printed QR codes

In this paper, we explore the usage of printed tags to authenticate products. Printed tags are a cheap alternative to RFID and other tag based systems and do not require specialized equipment. Due to the simplistic nature of such printed codes, many security issues like tag impersonation, server impersonation, reader impersonation, replay attacks and denial of service present in RFID based solutions need to be handled differently. We propose a cost-efficient scheme based on static tag based hash chains to address these security threats. We analyze the security characteristics of this scheme and compare it to other product authentication schemes that use RFID tags. Finally, we show that our proposed statically printed QR codes can be at least as secure as RFID tags.