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Sudoku-based secret sharing approach with cheater prevention using QR code

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Abstract

QR codes as public patent are widely used to acquire the information in various fields. However, the characteristic of its public readability hinders its usage for delivering private messages. To overcome this weakness, we propose a Sudoku-based secret sharing scheme to protect the privacy QR code message with the functionality of cheater prevention. The secret messages will be divided into several shadows and concealed to the QR code by replacing the QR code public message bits. And the private messages can be faithfully reproduced when all the involved participants cooperate. In our secret sharing scheme, the QR code public message still can be fully decoded publicly from the marked QR codes via a QR code reader, which helps to reduce uninvolved users’ curiosity. Experiments show that the proposed scheme is feasible, with high security protection level, and resistant to common image post-processing attacks.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by the Foundation of Fujian Educational Committee of China (No. JAT160357).

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Correspondence to Chin-Chen Chang.

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Huang, PC., Chang, CC. & Li, YH. Sudoku-based secret sharing approach with cheater prevention using QR code. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 25275–25294 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-5784-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-5784-0

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