The invention of O—KEYs
How O—KEYs were invented
“We live in a day an age where Rembrandts and Rolexes are copied in a quality where we cannot tell authentic from counterfeit"
A Danish professor of chemistry, specialising in luminescent materials such as those used in glow in the dark ink, is sitting in the world’s largest specialised chemistry conference. He is sitting in a section on the practical uses of luminescent materials and is listening to a colleague describing the use of fluorescent inks to print invisible QR that glow read under a black light. This is supposed to be the world’s foremost technology to protect against counterfeits. The Danish professor is confused, because printing with the pigments that essentially are the same as the white layer that makes fluorescent tubes glow, cannot be state of the art.
The professor, the hero of our story, is thinking. Yes, hard to make technologies are what we have relied on for decades to protect our most valuable objects. Currency. The professor goes to the ECB and looks at all the different security features, and he finds that they all rely on being hard to make. There are a many of them, but we live in a day an age where Rembrandts and Rolexes are copied in a quality where we cannot tell authentic from counterfeit. We can make anything, so how do we protect against counterfeits? The problem is large: thousands of lives are lost to counterfeit medicine, fake food make us loose faith in our supermarkets, and inferior counterfeits incurs billions of euros in losses every year. So what can we do?
The professor discovers the only unique feature of each euro note: the serial number. And finds copy-protection technologies that is based on following the serial number. We have all seen Hollywood movies, where numbered notes has featured in a ransom or robbery. The continued reading—the tracking—of a serial numbers can provide security, but we need to keep track of each serial number. So it is a workaround, not a solution. The professor wonders if the serial number itself can be made secure. How can a serial number be made? It can be printed as numbers, as barcodes, as QR codes, embedded in RFID/NFC chips. It can be invisible using Digimarc® or luminescent ink. But in all of these examples, the serial number is simply made, and can be copied. Are there no other solutions? The next day, the professor is obsessed and continues his exploration of anti counterfeit solutions during the lectures at the conference. An suddenly he discovers the pioneering work of Pappu on physical unclonable functions. The professor immediately realizes that he can make physical unclonable functions into a useful technology. Eureka! The idea of O—KEYs, serial numbers that cannot be copied, was formed.
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From high-end fashion to electronics, our O–KEY ensures that every product is genuine, safeguarding your brand and consumer trust. Find out how our advanced, yet simple technology fits your industry’s unique challenges and needs.
Shortcomings of RFID and NFC
The O-KEY technology overcomes RFID and NFC
Unclonable Serialisation
The O-KEY technology overcomes the limits of QR codes