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In criminal courts, the rules of evidence often require establishing the chain of custody of evidence presented. The third type of authentication relies on documentation or other external affirmations. Bills, coins, and cheques incorporate hard-to-duplicate physical features, such as fine printing or engraving, distinctive feel, watermarks, and holographic imagery, which are easy for trained receivers to verify. For instance, the son of Han van Meegeren, the well-known art-forger, forged the work of his father and provided a certificate for its provenance as well see the article Jacques van Meegeren.Ĭriminal and civil penalties for fraud, forgery, and counterfeiting can reduce the incentive for falsification, depending on the risk of getting caught.Ĭurrency and other financial instruments commonly use this second type of authentication method. Certificates can, however, also be forged, and the authentication of these poses a problem. In art and antiques, certificates are of great importance for authenticating an object of interest and value. In general, it relies on the facts that creating a forgery indistinguishable from a genuine artifact requires expert knowledge, that mistakes are easily made, and that the amount of effort required to do so is considerably greater than the amount of profit that can be gained from the forgery. Documents can be verified as being created on ink or paper readily available at the time of the item's implied creation.Īttribute comparison may be vulnerable to forgery. The physics of sound and light, and comparison with a known physical environment, can be used to examine the authenticity of audio recordings, photographs, or videos. An archaeologist, on the other hand, might use carbon dating to verify the age of an artifact, do a chemical and spectroscopic analysis of the materials used, or compare the style of construction or decoration to other artifacts of similar origin. For example, an art expert might look for similarities in the style of painting, check the location and form of a signature, or compare the object to an old photograph. The second type of authentication is comparing the attributes of the object itself to what is known about objects of that origin. Centralized authority-based trust relationships back most secure internet communication through known public certificate authorities decentralized peer-based trust, also known as a web of trust, is used for personal services such as email or files ( Pretty Good Privacy, GNU Privacy Guard) and trust is established by known individuals signing each other's cryptographic key at Key signing parties, for instance. A vendor selling branded items implies authenticity, while he or she may not have evidence that every step in the supply chain was authenticated. With autographed sports memorabilia, this could involve someone attesting that they witnessed the object being signed. When authentication is required of art or physical objects, this proof could be a friend, family member or colleague attesting to the item's provenance, perhaps by having witnessed the item in its creator's possession. The first type of authentication is accepting proof of identity given by a credible person who has first-hand evidence that the identity is genuine. Īuthentication can be considered to be of three types: In computer science, verifying a user's identity is often required to allow access to confidential data or systems. In art, antiques and anthropology, a common problem is verifying that a given artifact was produced by a certain person or in a certain place or period of history. Security information and event management (SIEM)Īuthentication is relevant to multiple fields.Host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS).
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