Industrial Privacy in RFID-based Batch Recalls

Batch recalls are an important topic for manufacturers and producers. Especially in the food and in the pharmaceutical industry, producers are obliged to implement recalls in order to comply with legislation. In extreme cases, non-compliance can cause loss of life, e.g. when perished food or medicine reaches the consumer. Current batch recall practice is expensive and difficult, since many supply chain partners need to combine the data from their ERP systems. Radio frequency identification (RFID) can be used to efficiently implement batch recalls, e.g. by storing batch numbers from the parts/ingredients used in all manufacturing steps. But this raises concerns on industrial privacy, since competitors could use this information to gain insight into the whole supply chain. We overcome this problem by storing tracing information on RFID tags and encrypting the information, such that it is only available in case of a recall. We encrypt the information using identity based encryption and furthermore allow universal re-encryption along the supply chain to prevent information leakages from the ciphertexts.