2D bar-codes for authentication: A security approach

In this paper, we investigate the authentication problem of real-world goods on which 2D bar-codes (2D-BC) were printed and we take the opponent's point of view. The opponent is assumed to have access to Nc noisy copies of a genuine 2D-BC (noise being due to printing and scanning processes). A simple estimator of the 2D-BC based on copies averages is proposed, letting the opponent print a fake 2D-BC which aims at being declared as genuine by the system detector. Performance of the estimator in terms of error probability at the detector side is then derived with respect to Nc and compared with experimental results on real 2D-BC. It is shown that the opponent can produce a fake that successfully fools the detector with a reasonable number of genuine goods.