Lovely work. Here's a similar project where I showed that randomly-placed multicolored candy particles (nonpareils) can be used to confirm the authenticity of pharmaceuticals: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11234-4
As a giant identifier nerd, this is incredibly cool. Any insights/thoughts on tamper resistance/non-duplication? I realize that this is a bit outside the original use case/threat model, but would it be possible to ensure that any physical injury to the coating would ensure that the code would no longer match? Seems like a challenge because you want robust matching but not robust enough to allow someone to substitute or reproduce the exact pattern.
I'm fairly certain that this cannot defend against a determined adversary buying up a bunch of pills, reading out the ids, and then reproducing the patterns (which would already be in the database) or similar enough patterns via a non-random process. Only useful for substitution attacks where someone trusts a pill because it is in a database without realizing that its contents could have been substituted for e.g. poison.
This may be obvious, but it also seems critical for any database that might use these to have expiration dates, otherwise expired pills could be bought in bulk and resold or have their codes reused.
Very cool work! Speckles could be added to the pill itself to eliminate the possibility of shipping damage, though it was good to see you tested that.
I know explosives are often laced with statistical chemical properties that identify them. I was wondering if that could be done to limit ammunition purchases as a way to get around gun control.
Thank you for sharing that, I really enjoyed reading your work, it looked like a fun project.
In addition to authentication, I imagine they could also be used to double-check expiration dates or as a last-ditch effort to notify consumers in the event of a recall. Being able to precisely identify exactly which factory and batch any given pill or other edible item came from could be very useful in some cases.
It's common to have compartments that organize your pill schedule, usually with 14 labeled cells - morning and evening for each day of the week.
Set it up once a week and then just take the pills in the appropriate cell when the time is right. This also solves the problem of "did I already take my pills for today?".
It's a good memory aid, since most (all?) memory is associative in nature. Just coming UP with that system kept the neurons active some, if even a little.
They aren't different colors. They have are a standard color with a standard sprinkle, but the details of the sprinkle are unique, like a (real) fingerprint.
I'm fairly certain that this cannot defend against a determined adversary buying up a bunch of pills, reading out the ids, and then reproducing the patterns (which would already be in the database) or similar enough patterns via a non-random process. Only useful for substitution attacks where someone trusts a pill because it is in a database without realizing that its contents could have been substituted for e.g. poison.
This may be obvious, but it also seems critical for any database that might use these to have expiration dates, otherwise expired pills could be bought in bulk and resold or have their codes reused.