MIT researchers announced that they have developed a cryptographic ID tag that could help combat chain counterfeiting, which costs companies billions of dollars annually. The tech is small enough to fit on the majority of products and verify their authenticity. In a 2018 report, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated that counterfeit goods are sold worldwide at a rate of $2 trillion per year. This counterfeiting is complex and includes strategic amounts of checkpoints to make it more difficult to ensure authenticity, resulting in companies ending up with imitation parts.
These wireless ID tags could become essential to combatting this counterfeiting, authenticating assets as they arrive at each checkpoint. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are too large to fit on small medical and industrial components, automotive parts, or silicon chips and contain no tough security measures, therefore, MIT’s new chip could transform this industry and how companies authenticate their parts.
Read More: Tiny cryptographic ID chip can help combat hardware counterfeiting
