SECURITY TAG AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEM USABLE WITH MOLDED CASE CIRCUIT BREAKERS

A security tag (4, 104) and electronic system (54) detect unauthorized tampering of Molded Case Circuit Breakers (MCCBs) (12) and authenticate MCCBs against counterfeiting or gray market items. The system can involve digital generation of a public key and a corresponding private key, both keys comprise large positive integers, applying the private key to an MCCB-specific message string and creating a digital signature code, generating an identification code (2) from the MCCB-specific message string and the digital signature code, building the identification code into one or more security tags, and installing the security tags on MCCBs, and authenticating MCCBs through a verification step and a certification step. The verification step reads the security tags, and verifies the identification code. The certification step checks the identification code against a revocation list (76) that contains previously compromised identification codes.