Optically Interrogated Unique Object with Simulation Attack Prevention

A Unique Object (UNO) is a physical object with unique characteristics that can be measured externally. The usually analogue measurement can be converted into a digital representation - a fingerprint - which uniquely identifies the object. For practical applications it is necessary that measurements can be performed without the need of specialist equipment or complex measurement setup. Furthermore, a UNO should be able to defeat simulation attacks; an attacker may replace the UNO with a device or system that produces the expected measurement. Recently a novel type of UNOs based on Quantum Dots (QDs) and exhibiting unique photo-luminescence properties has been proposed. The uniqueness of these UNOs is based on quantum effects that can be interrogated using a light source and a camera. The so called Quantum Confinement UNO (QCUNO) responds uniquely to different light excitation levels which is exploited for simulation attack protection, as opposed to focusing on features too small to reproduce and therefore difficult to measure. In this paper we describe methods for extraction of fingerprints from the QCUNO. We evaluate our proposed methods using 46 UNOs in a controlled setup. Focus of the evaluation are entropy, error resilience and the ability to detect simulation attacks.