Anti-Tamper Unclonable Asset Tracking to Promote Nuclear Nonproliferation

Tracking accountable nuclear material is of the utmost importance in the nuclear material management domain. Presented here is an authentication and anti-tamper technology that implements unclonable universal unique identifiers along with clandestine embedded information to achieve a persistent, long-term asset tracking capability.. The approach incorporates an asymmetric steganographic embedding process that achieves high-density information storage, tiered information retrieval, and an unclonable printing process. Our method preserves the image quality of the cover media to prevent the detection of the clandestine information with a Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) greater than 30dB and consistent statistically insignificant bit error rates of the steganographed data from repeated measures. This unclonable asset tracking technology implements two-layers which consists of 1) authentication of the intrinsic printer signature that connects the printed object to the exact printer that created it, and 2) recovery and authentication of the information embedded within that printed object. Furthermore, the process of embedding covert information into a printed object provides an anti-tamper capability. The embedding process is accomplished through application of an asymmetric steganographic embedding technique that visually imperceptible and fragile to cloning/duplication attempts. The technology is field-deployable on Handheld smartphone devices to minimize inspector fatigue during field site inspections with minimal training and configuration.