A Survey on Secret Data Hiding in Quick Response Barcodes

Abstract

Abstract-As the information processing system plays a crucial part in the internet, online information security has become the top priority in all sectors. Failing to provide online information security may cause loss of critical information or someone may use or distribute such information for malicious purpose. Recently QR barcodes have been used as an effective way to securely share information. This paper presents the survey on secret data hiding techniques which can share high security information over network using QR barcode.Keywords-QR Barcode, Information Hiding, Online information Security. I. INTRODUCTIONDue to tremendous growth in communication technology, sharing the information through the communication network has never been so convenient. Nowadays information is processed electronically and conveyed through public networks. Such networks are unsecured and hence sensitive information needs to be protected by some means. Cryptography is the study of techniques that allows us to do this. In order to protect information from various computer attacks as well as network attacks various cryptographic protocols and firewalls are used. But no single measure can ensure complete security. Nowadays, the use of internet and sharing information are growing increasingly across the globe, security becomes a vital issue for the society.Security attacks are classified as passive attacks and active attacks. In passive attacks, attacker monitors network traffic and looks for sensitive information but does not affect system resources. Passive attacks include traffic analysis, eavesdropping, Release of message contents. In active attack, attacker breaks protection features to gain unauthorized access to steal or modify information. Active attacks include masquerade, replay, modification of messages, and denial of service.Therefore, security threats (such as eavesdropping, data modification, phishing, website leaks etc.) force us to develop new methods to counter them. Considering QR barcodes as an effective media of sharing information, many researchers have proposed information/data hiding methods [6,7,8,9.] as well as online transaction systems [1,2,3,4,5] using QR barcode. In this paper, we describe different information hiding schemes using QR barcode.To keep the privacy of the barcode data, the data normally are stored in a back-end database, and the barcode shows the web link for the database. Only a browser with the correct access can log into the database and get the confidential data. However, the web link of the back-end database creates a possible risk in which it may attract the intruder"s attention. Chuang et al. proposed a secret sharing scheme for the QR tag to protect the secret barcode data. Unfortunately, the content of the QR tags is meaningless, and the shares can be easily obtained by scanning the QR tags with a barcode reader. The sharing system is also unable of preventing cheaters in its real world application.A dependable distributed secret storage system with the QR code can be used in import...

Fake and Real Massaging at the Same Time with QR Code in Web Services for Different Users

“…In the third method, the data to be hidden is embedded in the original QR code without distortion of the original contents. This method has been used [12]. Storing the encrypted message stored in QR code helps to prevent the message from being modified.…”