This is an article by Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP*, Jon S. Warner, Ph.D., Sonia J. Trujillo, Anthony R.E. Garcia, Ron K. Martinez, Leon N. Lopez, and Adam N. Pacheco of the Vulnerability Assessment Team Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Product tampering is a serious product safety issue. Unfortunately,
neither tamper-evident packaging used on consumer products, nor
tamper-indicating seals used for cargo, warehouse, and factory security
provide reliable tamper detection. We believe there is a better approach
to tamper detection, at least for tamper-indicating seals: anti-evidence
seals. Conventional seals must store evidence of tampering until such
time as the seal can be inspected. But adversaries can too easily hide or
erase the evidence, or replace the seal with a counterfeit seal.
With anti-evidence seals, in contrast, we store information when the seal is first installed that tampering has NOT yet been detected. This information
(the “anti-evidence”) gets instantly erased once tampering is detected.
There is thus nothing for an adversary to hide, erase, or counterfeit. This
paper discusses 5 new prototype electronic seals based on the anti-evidence
concept.