Towards a Supply Chain Management System for Counterfeit Mitigation\n using Blockchain and PUF

Abstract

The complexity of today's supply chain, organised in several tiers and\nincluding many companies located in different countries, makes it challenging\nto assess the history and integrity of procured physical parts, and to make\norganisations really accountable for their conduct. This enables malicious\npractices like counterfeiting and insertion of back doors, which are extremely\ndangerous, especially in supply chains of physical parts for industrial control\nsystems used in critical infrastructures, where a country and human lives can\nbe put at risk. This paper aims at mitigating these issues by proposing an\napproach where procured parts are uniquely identified and tracked along the\nchain, across multiple sites, to detect tampering. Our solution is based on\nconsortium blockchain and smart contract technologies, hence it is\ndecentralised, highly available and provides strong guarantees on the integrity\nof stored data and executed business logic. The unique identification of parts\nalong the chain is implemented by using physically unclonable functions (PUFs)\nas tamper-resistant IDs. We first define the threat model of an adversary\ninterested in tampering with physical products along the supply chain, then\nprovide the design of the tracking system that implements the proposed\nanti-counterfeiting approach. We present a security analysis of the tracking\nsystem against the designated threat model and a prototype evaluation to show\nits technical feasibility and assess its effectiveness in counterfeit\nmitigation. Finally, we discuss several key practical aspects concerning our\nsolution ad its integration with real supply chains.\n