A system for detection of tampering on intermodal containers

Shipping containers provide a standard and ubiquitous way to move goods between different places and countries. In fact, a large proportion of the international trade rely on them every day. It is thus understandable the importance of improving transport security of the containers hosting those goods. It is therefore important to detect the possibility that a container has been tampered, both for avoiding losses due to theft, both for minimizing security risks due to counterfeiting or smuggling of illegal assets as soon as possible. Standard tampering and intrusion counter-measures include locks, hard walls or reinforced curtains, tamper evident seals, etc. Most of these solutions, however, either need that the shipping company buys suitable containers (eg a container with hardened walls), or invest money in adding usually active devices to them (like for IR detection systems, locks, etc.). A different way to detect anomalies is proposed in this work.