Printed Electronics Now staff06.30.20
Smartrac, an Avery Dennison company, announced the introduction of its new Circus Tamper Loop Pro inlays and tags, combining tamper detection and highly secure product authentication in one NFC product.
As the company’s first offering based on the SIC43NT chip from Silicon Craft, the new inlays and tags complement Smartrac’s “Pro” series for “one-time password” product authentication.
Smartrac's Circus Tamper Loop Pro products extend the proven tamper detection and authentication features of the Circus Tamper Loop tags with advanced cryptographic capabilities provided by its Pro level IC.
Typical application areas comprise the authentication of pharmaceutical products and luxury goods from premium liquors to high-quality watches.
The SIC43NT chip uses a highly secure MICKEY V1 Stream cipher algorithm to create one-time password values for real-time tag and message authentication.
Leveraging its unique feature set, the latest NFC product targets a wide array of NFC-based applications in highly secure product authentication and brand protection, consumer engagement, customer loyalty programs and protected content distribution.
The product’s tamper-loop design specifically enables an advanced digital seal functionality for smart packaging and brand protection. It exhibits one of two conditions:
A closed-loop shows that the packaging is sealed; while an open loop indicates an open package.
Moreover, the tamper loop status is irreversibly stored in the IC memory and can be checked at the tap of a smartphone via a programmed on-chip URL. Secure authentication can be set to start creating one-time password values either before or after the loop has been tampered with.
Circus Tamper Loop Pro comes with 144 Byte user memory with password protection, works with all NFC reading devices, and is compliant to both NFC Forum Type 2 specifications and the ISO 14 443 A standard.
Smartrac launched its Pro series with the first Circus Pro tag based on NXP’s NTAG 424 DNA IC in late 2019, and later offered a version based on a white label chip called Smartrac OTP, providing different cryptographic characteristics for a wide array of product authentication applications and diverse security requirements.
Through leveraging different methods and algorithms to comply with different security levels, the ICs of all Pro inlays and tags provide one-time password values for real-time tag and message authentication, supporting a choice of digital verification services for secure product authentication and the delivery of exclusive digital content.
“By combining a digital seal functionality and advanced cryptographic capabilities, the new Circus Tamper Loop Pro inlays and tags meet the requirements of many customers looking for highly secure product authentication and brand protection, consumer engagement, customer loyalty programs or protected content distribution”, said Dr. Juha Virtanen, head of R&D, Avery Dennison Intelligent Labels.
Circus Tamper Loop Pro products based on SIC43NT chips are available in high volumes as of now.
