Editing Taggant (section)

{{Short description|Marker applied to material for detection purposes}}
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A '''taggant''' is any chemical or physical marker added to materials to allow various forms of testing or detection.  Physical taggants can take many different forms but are typically microscopic in size, included at low levels, and simple to detect.  They can be utilized to differentiate authentic product from counterfeits, provide identifying information for traceability purposes (e.g. lot number, company name), determine mixing homogeneity<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.microtracers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/B-5-Mix-with-Confidence-1994-7-18-13-ZE.pdf|title=Mix With Confidence|last=Eisenberg|first=David|date=June 1994|website=|publisher=International Milling Flour & Feed|access-date=}}</ref> and cross-contamination,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.microtracers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/C-3-Validating-cross-contamination-control-2007-7-18-13-ZE.pdf|title=Validating Cross-Contamination Control|last=Eisenberg|first=David|date=September 2006|website=Feed Industry Network|publisher=Watt Publishing|access-date=}}</ref> and to detect dilution of proprietary products.  Taggants are known to be widely used in the animal feed industry, plastics, inks, sheet and flexible [[explosives]], and pharmaceuticals.

An RF taggant is a [[radio frequency]] [[integrated circuit|microchip]] used in [[automated identification and data capture]] (see [[RFID]]). In such cases, electronic devices use radio waves to track and identify items, such as pharmaceutical products, by assigning individual [[serial number]]s to the containers holding each product. This technology may prevent the diversion or [[counterfeit drugs|counterfeiting of drugs]] by allowing wholesalers and pharmacists to determine the identity and dosage of individual products.

A [[software taggant]] is a cryptographic signature added to software that enables positive origin identification and integrity of programs. Software taggants use standard PKI techniques (see [[public key infrastructure]]) and were introduced by the [[Industry Connections Security Group]] of [[IEEE]] in an attempt to control proliferation of [[malware]] obfuscation via [[executable compression]].