Steganography of Encrypted Messages Inside Valid QR Codes

Abstract

Steganography is considered the first line of defense in information security as it hides a secret message (payload) inside an innocent looking file (container) to transfer the payload under the adversary's nose without noticing it. Steganographic systems only use the container to hide the payload. In this paper, we present a steganographic system that uses the container not only to hide the payload, but also to give misleading information to the adversary. To achieve this goal, we use quick response (QR) code as a container. QR codes generated by our proposed system can carry its ordinary message in addition to the payload. Anyone can read the message, but the payload can only be obtained using a secret key. The message and the payload are unrelated; i.e. any message can be generated regardless of the payload and vise versa. We can take advantage of that by generating a message that gives misleading information to the adversary. We test the proposed system and show that the generated QR code is (valid) i.e indistinguishable from an ordinary QR code which makes it look innocent and less susceptible to an adversary's attack. Moreover, it is space-efficient, has an acceptable level of noise immunity and is prone to steganalysis attacks.

Secure Opto-Audio Cryptosystem Using XORing Mask and Hartley Transform

“…To ensure and confirm the superiority of the proposed optoaudio cryptosystem using XORing mask, LASM, and Hartley transform (HT), it is compared with the recent state-of-the-art methods [22,40,41,42] in terms of various metrics like SD, correlation coefficient, NPCR, and UACI. The comparison study between the proposed opto-audio cryptosystem and the related state-of-the-art methods [20,38,39,40] are employed on the Female-Male audio. Table VIVI shows the results of comparison between the proposed opto-audio cryptosystem and the related state-ofthe-art methods [22,40,41,42] for Female-Male audio.…”

“…If G1(x,y) = G2(x,y), then T(x,y) = 1; Alternatively, T(x,y) = 0. The NPCR can be calculated as [37][38][39]:…”

“…The NPCR calculates the different pixel number ratio to the total pixel number in G1 and G2. The UACI is evaluated as [37][38][39]:…”

A Confidential QR Code Approach with Higher Information Privacy

“…Based on the above observations, there is a considerable lack of research on protecting the confidential information of QR codes. Anyone can easily scan and retrieve QR data content through barcode readers [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]; therefore, the protection of private data is critical. Traditional image hiding or watermarking techniques require additional image processing processes/computers that are not suitable for real-time scanning and direct retrieval of QR codes by barcode readers.…”

Automatic face recording system based on quick response code using multicam

“…Meanwhile, certain technique has been introduced to hide encrypted data using EK-EQR algorithm [43] to improve traceability system [44]. There is also necessity in the further improvement for QR code to protect information with steganography or cryptography in order to guard the knowledge against the attackers [45], which consider the error correction levels up to 30% [46] to the linkage of multimedia data [47], [48]. Interestingly, mobile computing present a great way to easily apply attendance systems [49] to large and complex battlefield interconnection systems [50], allowing QR codes to work and communicate with users anytime, anywhere and on any device.…”