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A General Steganalysis Method of QR Codes

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Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime (ICDF2C 2022)

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Abstract

With the wide application of quick response (QR) codes, its security has been paid more and more attention. There are many steganography schemes to embed the secret message into QR codes, which can be used in terrorist activities, spread viruses, etc. However, there is currently no effective scheme for detecting stego QR code. This paper divides the spatial QR code-based steganography schemes into three categories and then proposes a steganalysis method for QR codes. The method includes detecting stegao codes and recovering pure QR codes, which is realized by the code regeneration, module comparison, and embedded information filtering operations. Our method can perfectly distinguish the stego code and block the transmission of embedded information for the spatial QR code-based steganography schemes. Theoretical analysis and experiments show that the proposed method is feasible, universal, and robust.

Supported by the Program of the National University of Defense Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Number: 61602491).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Defense Technology, 460 Huangshan Road, Shushan District, Hefei, 230037, China

    Jia Chen, Kunlin Chen, Yongjie Wang, Xuehu Yan & Longlong Li

  2. Anhui Key Laboratory of Cyberspace Security Situation Awareness and Evaluation, Hefei, 230037, China

    Jia Chen, Kunlin Chen, Yongjie Wang, Xuehu Yan & Longlong Li

Authors
  1. Jia Chen
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  2. Kunlin Chen
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  3. Yongjie Wang
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  4. Xuehu Yan
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  5. Longlong Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xuehu Yan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University at Albany, Albany, NY, USA

    Sanjay Goel

  2. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Pavel Gladyshev

  3. Horangi Cyber Security, Singapore, Singapore

    Akatyev Nikolay

  4. Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA

    George Markowsky

  5. Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA

    Daryl Johnson

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© 2023 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Chen, J., Chen, K., Wang, Y., Yan, X., Li, L. (2023). A General Steganalysis Method of QR Codes. In: Goel, S., Gladyshev, P., Nikolay, A., Markowsky, G., Johnson, D. (eds) Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime. ICDF2C 2022. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 508. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36574-4_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36574-4_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36573-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36574-4

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