Authentication
In art, antiques, and anthropology, a common problem is verifying that a given artifact was produced by a certain person or in a certain place or period of history.
For example, an art expert might look for similarities in the style of painting, check the location and form of a signature, or compare the object to an old photograph.
For instance, the son of Han van Meegeren, the well-known art-forger, forged the work of his father and provided a certificate for its provenance as well.
Criminal and civil penalties for fraud, forgery, and counterfeiting can reduce the incentive for falsification, depending on the risk of getting caught.
Bills, coins, and cheques incorporate hard-to-duplicate physical features, such as fine printing or engraving, distinctive feel, watermarks, and holographic imagery, which are easy for trained receivers to verify.
As mentioned above, having an item for sale in a reputable store implicitly attests to it being genuine, the first type of authentication.
The second type of authentication might involve comparing the quality and craftsmanship of an item, such as an expensive handbag, to genuine articles.
The third type of authentication could be the presence of a trademark on the item, which is a legally protected marking, or any other identifying feature which aids consumers in the identification of genuine brand-name goods.
This type of authentication is not recommended for financial or personally relevant transactions that warrant a higher level of security.
[15] Conventional computer systems authenticate users only at the initial log-in session, which can be the cause of a critical security flaw.
Efforts to control the supply chain and educate consumers help ensure that authentic products are sold and used.
Generally, the device to be authenticated needs some sort of wireless or wired digital connection to either a host system or a network.
For products and services that these secure coprocessors can be applied to, they can offer a solution that can be much more difficult to counterfeit than most other options while at the same time being more easily verified.
[2] Packaging and labeling can be engineered to help reduce the risks of counterfeit consumer goods or the theft and resale of products.
Counterfeit goods, unauthorized sales (diversion), material substitution and tampering can all be reduced with these anti-counterfeiting technologies.
Anti-counterfeiting technologies that can be used with packaging include: Literary forgery can involve imitating the style of a famous author.
If an original manuscript, typewritten text, or recording is available, then the medium itself (or its packaging – anything from a box to e-mail headers) can help prove or disprove the authenticity of the document.
However, text, audio, and video can be copied into new media, possibly leaving only the informational content itself to use in authentication.
Various systems have been invented to allow authors to provide a means for readers to reliably authenticate that a given message originated from or was relayed by them.
These involve authentication factors like: The opposite problem is the detection of plagiarism, where information from a different author is passed off as a person's own work.
Related to that, an authentication project is therefore a reading and writing activity in which students document the relevant research process ([28]).
However, it is not known whether these cryptographically based authentication methods are provably secure, since unanticipated mathematical developments may make them vulnerable to attack in the future.
