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15.05.2009 
In recognition of its “Krypto” RFID chip, Siemens was named the winner of the award in
the “Innovative Company” category at the International Trade Fair and Science Forum for
Automatic Identification, EuroID 2009. In addition to protecting against product piracy,
the chip can be directly integrated into the products or their packaging. The item’s
genuineness is determined in a few tenths of a second by means of a cryptographic process
that doesn’t require an online link. The chip can be used to provide security for goods
of all kinds, and it should make life very difficult for counterfeiters in the future.
The secure authentication process for RFID use was created by Siemens Corporate Technology.
The system uses public-key cryptography, and the chip encodes a query from the reader device
with its own private key. With lightning speed, the receiver is then able to verify the
correctness of the answer to this query by means of the matching public key. The chip can
also be used to store other information, including the product’s designation of origin and
serial number. It is practically impossible to copy the chip or read the encryption key it
contains.
The Siemens developers used optimized algorithms to substantially reduce the computing power
required for the chip. And in place of a programmable processor they used fixed,
non-programmable circuit components. This enabled them to reduce not only energy consumption
but also chip size — a major cost factor in this technology.
Siemens is currently cooperating with its technology partner Infineon in pilot projects for
various companies. Among other things, these projects focus on integrating the chip into
specific products that are to be protected against imitations, and on the required
infrastructure and possible processes for protecting distribution channels. Although the
chip will initially be used only for these projects, it will subsequently be launched on
the market on a large scale.
Siemens is to present the asymmetric encryption RFID chip at EuroID 2009 in Cologne from
May 5 to 7, 2009. The European AutoID Award is being presented at the trade fair for the
fourth time. In its laudation the Jury emphasized the importance of the innovation for the
German industry which has to suffer damages stemming from product piracy of about 30 billion
Euros annually. The market desperately looked for such a solution.
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