The counterfeiting of products and documents is a global problem affecting multiple sectors. The University of Vigo is participating in the European project QuantumPUF, as the sole Spanish entity, with the objective of developing a new generation of technologies based on quantum and photonic principles to verify the authenticity of physical objects and documents.
The Vigo Quantum Communication Center (VQCC) at UVigo is leading the work package dedicated to security requirements and their practical implementation. "Our main objective will be to study to what extent these new devices can offer real guarantees of authenticity and resistance to counterfeiting," explains Davide Rusca, a VQCC researcher responsible for the investigation.
Coordinated by the Institute of Telecommunications of Portugal, QuantumPUF has a budget of nearly three million euros from the Horizon Europe program and will last for four years. The initiative brings together seven partners from Portugal, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Croatia, with UVigo's contribution amounting to approximately 300,000 euros.
The project aims to advance the development of physically unclonable functions (PUFs) based on luminescent materials, such as hybrid nanoparticles and lanthanide complexes. These solutions, which can be read by portable optical systems integrated into smartphones, are intended to facilitate the verification of product and document authenticity.
UVigo's contribution focuses on evaluating the security and anti-counterfeiting guarantees of the new devices, identifying vulnerabilities, and protecting them against attacks. "It is not enough to manufacture a device that is difficult to reproduce: it is also necessary to determine under what conditions it can offer security guarantees and how these can be verified in practice," notes Rusca.
The initiative, which began with a launch meeting in Lisbon, seeks to establish a common framework for developing authentication mechanisms that are more resistant to cloning and the threats of quantum computing, as well as being portable, efficient, and environmentally friendly.
