Unique Code Structure for Liquid Food Package Authentication
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current techniques lack a robust and efficient method for uniquely identifying individual packages of liquid food, which is essential for tracking, authentication, and database search, and are vulnerable to fraudulent code generation and guessing.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a code structure with a header and payload portion, where the payload data is encrypted and the header contains key-identification data, hash data, and location information, ensuring uniqueness and security, and enabling efficient database search.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If plain text codes are applied on packages, then codes can be read and understood by consumers, but the codes cannot uniquely identify each individual package and are vulnerable to fraud
Solution Approach 1:
The code is divided into a header portion containing code-definition data and a payload portion containing encrypted payload data. This segmentation allows the code to maintain readability through structured formatting while ensuring uniqueness and security through encryption of the payload portion.
Solution Approach 2:
An encryption algorithm acts as an intermediary between the payload data and the final code representation. The encryption process transforms readable payload data into encrypted form, maintaining security while allowing authorized systems to decrypt and process the information.
2Reliability
If encryption is applied to ensure code security, then code uniqueness and fraud prevention are improved, but code complexity and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The encryption algorithm and key are selected and applied in advance during code generation. The header portion is prepared with code-definition data before the payload portion is encrypted, allowing systems to pre-process and optimize the encryption operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The encryption approach uses parameter changes by selecting from a predefined set of encryption algorithms and keys. This allows the system to adjust security parameters while managing computational complexity through predefined options rather than requiring custom encryption implementations.
3Productivity
If globally unique codes are generated for each package, then tracking and authentication capability is improved, but the risk of fraudulent code generation increases if not properly secured
Solution Approach 1:
The encryption mechanism converts the potential harm of code exposure into a benefit by making the payload portion unreadable to unauthorized parties. The encrypted payload data appears as random data to fraudsters but contains meaningful information that can be decrypted by authorized systems with the correct key.
Solution Approach 2:
Different portions of the code have different security qualities. The header portion contains readable code-definition data for basic identification, while the payload portion contains encrypted data for secure unique identification. This local differentiation of quality allows the code to serve multiple functions with appropriate security levels.
4Reliability
If code structure includes encrypted payload data, then code security is improved, but database search efficiency may be reduced due to encryption overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The database is pre-populated with codes generated using the same encryption algorithm and key selection process. This preliminary preparation allows the database to store encrypted codes in a standardized format, enabling efficient retrieval without requiring real-time encryption/decryption during search operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses parameter changes by selecting from predefined encryption algorithms and keys that are consistent between code generation and database storage. This consistency allows for optimized search operations where the encrypted format is predictable and can be efficiently processed by database systems.
Data Source
AI summary
Unique codes for marking packages for liquid food are generated with a header portion (40) containing non-encrypted code-definition data ([E], [G]) that represents the code structure and/or the code generation methodology, and a payload portion (41) containing encrypted payload data ([EP]). The encryption ensures that the code is sufficiently scrambled to make guessing and fraudulent code generation difficult. The payload data, before encryption, may be defined to be unique in each code, thereby also rendering the code unique. The payload data, before encryption, may also be structured so as to enable efficient search for the code in a database. When read from a package, the code may be processed by extracting the code-definition data ([E], [G]), identifying the payload portion (41), extracting the encrypted payload data ([EP]), re-creating the payload data by decryption, and searching the database for the code based on the payload data or one or more subsets thereof.