Dan Wanninger THUMB

Daniel Wanninger

Engineering

Electrical & Software Engineering

Most manufacturers and designers of products that require consumables (for a common example, think of printers and ink cartridges) want end users to use only genuine brand-name consumables, never knockoffs.

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There are several reasons for this. The first, obviously, is that the manufacturer of a product makes a profit by selling the related consumable. But the manufacturer also wants to protect against un-authorized generics that may reduce product performance or cause a danger to the user and create a liability for the manufacturer.

Coffee cup cropped

<h2>A quick look at authentication from the end user point of view </h2>

Unfortunately for manufacturers, some budget-conscious end users don’t always see things the same way. When manufacturers build systems into their products to block the use of more affordable generic consumables, consumer outrage can be the result. A few examples: 
<ul><li>When Keurig designed its coffee brewers with an infrared scanning system to “lock out” third party coffee pods, consumers were <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its-coffee-cups-totally-backfired" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">enraged</a>: “Talk about greedy corporate ridiculousness.” “You shouldn’t have to hack your coffee.” </li><li>When Hewlett Packard added DRM to their ink cartridges, consumers <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/09/hp-printer-drm/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">complained</a>: “People who make your microwave don’t get to tell you what kinds of frozen dinners to use.” The public outcry led HP to backtrack months later. </li><li>When a semi-conductor shortage made it impossible for Canon to continue manufacturing toner cartridges with built-in digital rights management (DRM) or authentication, Canon reluctantly posted instructions allowing customers to bypass their DRM protocols, and use generic ink instead. Indignant observers <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/88g835/canon-tells-customers-to-break-its-printer-cartridge-drm-due-to-chip-shortage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pointed out</a> that Canon had essentially admitted its own name brand ink was irrelevant to print quality, and that DRM in this case was simply a profit mechanism.</li></ul>
So, yes, device authentication of consumables gets a bum rap, and understandably so. Many end users want&nbsp;to save money, and when they are blocked from using cheaper generic ink cartridges, coffee pods, replacement batteries, and the like, a company may find itself the target of an angry Internet mob.&nbsp;
Authentication is not appropriate for every product, and should be thoughtfully considered from the end user's viewpoint.

That said, there are many applications where authentication is&nbsp;necessary for the manufacturer, end user, or both. Some examples: 
<ul><li>Medical devices where the authenticity of a consumable is critical for patient safety. </li><li>Battery powered devices with high discharge rates (like e-bikes) where cheap, generic replacement batteries might not meet spec and would pose a fire hazard. </li><li>Dispensers (food, beverage, hygiene, etc.) where the equipment is sold at a loss to the manufacturer under the assumption that they will make a profit selling refills.</li></ul>
<h2>A cost-effective approach to authentication</h2>
There are many different solutions available with varying degrees of security and at different price points. But authenticating your consumables need not break the bank. One simple and cost-effect solution that doesn’t require a network connection is to use NFC tags.   
NFC tags have become ubiquitous. Powered wirelessly from an external reader (such as any modern smart phone), a tiny tag IC and foil antenna can be embedded in a sticker and purchased for pennies in quantity. These tags carry a unique identifier with them and have storage space for custom information regarding the product they're stuck on.&nbsp;
 There are many different manufacturers of NFC tags including NXP, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and TI. To call themselves NFC, they must abide by established standards such as ISO/IEC 14443 and ISO/IEC15693. Compliance with the standards allows them to be read from or written to by just about any smart phone. Reader/writer chips are also readily available for embedded applications. An example is ST’s ST25R95, which has the added benefit of a card emulation mode, allowing for bidirectional communications. This versatile part has been used in a number of Delve’s designs. 
One way NFC tags and their unique IDs can facilitate authentication is by using the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). ECDSA and just about all modern cryptographic algorithms rely on the concept of a Trapdoor function—a mathematical function that is easy to compute but has no easy inverse. (This is the basis of public-key cryptography.)&nbsp;
 Using ECC, you can pick a private key (which you keep secret) and generate a public key which can be shared openly. With today’s computing systems, you’d need to expend enough energy to boil all the water on Earth to figure out the private key from the public key [1]. 
Armed with this information, here’s how ECDSA works:
<ul><li> In your factory, you stick an NFC tag on your consumable, then scan it to read its tag ID. For an NXP NTAG 21x tag [2] (among the most common and lowest cost), the ID is 7 bytes long.&nbsp;</li><li> That ID, along with your private key, are inputs to the ECDSA function. The output is an authentication signature.&nbsp;</li><li> Once you have that, write it to the NFC tag along with any other product information you need. </li></ul>

2023 03 27 Authenticate Consumables inline1 signature generation ecdsa

On the other end of the supply chain, your end device needs to include an NFC reader.&nbsp;<ul><li> When a new consumable is installed, the reader should scan the tag for the ID and signature.&nbsp;</li><li> It can then input the public key (stored locally on the device), the NFC tag ID, and signature into the ECDSA algorithm.&nbsp;</li><li> The output is a pass/fail response on the signature’s authenticity. </li></ul>

2023 03 27 Authenticate Consumables inline2 signature verification ecdsa

The ECDSA algorithm is not the simplest to code yourself, but there are many efficient implementations out there under various open-source licensing schemes that will run on MCUs with limited resources, putting it in easy reach of most applications. 
So what are the limitations? NFC tags are often just stickers after all, so it’s not hard to imagine someone peeling a sticker off a used or empty consumable and sticking it on a new generic one. This can be detected by the device though—if your 1 gallon ketchup bottle seems to have already dispensed 5 gallons of ketchup and is still going strong, you might want to flag that event as fishy.&nbsp;
 Another attack vector is through cloned tags. A 3rd party can’t create a valid signature on their own, but they could clone an existing tag ID and signature and manufacture them in volume. The same detection approach could be used here though too—if the same tag keeps showing up, then it might be a cloned tag. If your device happens to have a network connection, you could also send each tag ID off to the cloud—in this way the whole herd can watch out for cloned tags. 
There are other authentication methods out there that can address some of these shortcomings, but at the end of the day, NFC tags and ECDSA offer a big bang for your buck and are an excellent solution to many authentication problems.&nbsp;
 If you’d like to learn more about ECDSA or ECC, here are some helpful resources: 
<ul><li>[1]&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A (Relatively Easy To Understand) Primer on Elliptic Curve Cryptography</a> </li><li>[2]&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nxp.com/products/rfid-nfc/nfc-hf/ntag-for-tags-labels/ntag-213-215-216-nfc-forum-type-2-tag-compliant-ic-with-144-504-888-bytes-user-memory:NTAG213_215_216" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NTAG® 213/215/216: NFC Forum Type 2 Tag Compliant IC with 144/504/888 Bytes User Memory</a> </li><li>[3]&nbsp;<a href="https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/tech-articles/elliptic-curve-digital-signature-algorithm-explained--maxim-integrated.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Fundamentals of an ECDSA Authentication System</a> </li></ul>

Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.delve.com/services/engineering" target="_blank">Product Development Engineering Services from Delve​.</a>

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Authentication is not  appropriate for every product, but there are many applications where it's necessary for the manufacturer, end user, or both. Authenticating your consumables need not break the bank.

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A Cost-Effective Approach for Authenticating Consumables

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