A Cryptographic System for Brand Authentication and Material Traceability in the Textile Industry

This paper deals with problems of brand authentication and product traceability which are recently affecting the textile market; the continuing increase in the counterfeit production of clothes is heavily revealing the lack of adequate techniques able to assure both the brand authentication of final clothes and the trustworthy of textiles involved in the intermediate manufacturing stages. The signature methods that are currently available are based either on classical labels or on sophisticated textile markers whose reliability lays on the physical irreproducibility of the mark itself These approaches are either insufficient or too costly to be actually employed; hence this paper presents a new system that is based on cryptographic techniques and which can assure the traceability of the textile during the whole manufacturing process. The proposed solution does not require costly devices, and, even though it is conceived for the textile sector, it can be employed in many other fields as well. A preliminary prototype is described and its capability of working in the presence of noise and material alterations is discussed