Printed document integrity verification using barcode

Printed documents are still relevant in our daily life and information in it must be protected from threats and attacks such as forgery, falsification or unauthorized modification. Such threats make the document lose its integrity and authenticity. There are several techniques that have been proposed and used to ensure authenticity and originality of printed documents. But some of the techniques are not suitable for public use due to its complexity, hard to obtain special materials to secure the document and expensive. This paper discuss several techniques for printed document security such as watermarking and barcode as well as the usability of two dimensional barcode in document authentication and data compression with the barcode. A conceptual solution that are simple and efficient to secure the integrity and document sender's authenticity is proposed that uses two dimensional barcode to carry integrity and authenticity information in the document. The information stored in the barcode contains digital signature that provides sender's authenticity and hash value that can ensure the integrity of the printed document

Spamming the Internet of Things: A Possibility and its probable Solution

AbstractThe Internet of Things (IoT) enabled users to bring physical objects into the sphere of cyber world. This was made possible by different tagging technologies like NFC, RFID and 2D barcode which allowed physical objects to be identified and referred over the Internet. Due to less complexity and low development and deployment cost of 2D barcodes, they have become modus operandi for building an IoT system. This paper explores the possibility of spamming the Internet of Things. It tries to establish that web spammers can use 2D barcodes to flood the physical side of the IoT, trick users to see or reach unsolicited and unrelated content over the Internet and possibly destroy the legitimacy of correct content. Preliminary results from an experiment establishing the possibility of the problem are outlined. This paper also proposes the use of digital signatures (ECDSA) to address the problem of spamming the IoT. A prototype implementation of the solution and its experimental results are given in this paper

Paper-based Verification Design of Trade Business License in Indonesia

The trade business license certificate (SIUP) is a paper-based license to conduct trade businesses in Indonesia issued by the government. Until today, there is no mechanism for verifying the validity of document unless to verify it manually. The current paper presents a design that allows paper-based verification of the printed trade business license. It aims to provide the verification mechanism and ensure the document validity. Our design implemented digital signature with QR Code image that placed into the document and the digital certificate issued by a certification authority (CA). The proposed scheme generated 442Bytes of data and version 14 of QR Code to scan easily by a reader device. The experimental result indicates that our scheme is easy and feasible to implement in Indonesia with guaranteed the document integrity, authentication, and nonrepudiation

A Prototype for authentication of secondary school certificates: case of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination certificates

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) at Strathmore UniversityMore often Universities and training institution in Kenya enroll students who want to further their education. Due to increased demand for educated labor force, the number of individuals reported to have used illegitimate KCSE certificates to join these Universities has increased. Perpetrators of this crime have succeeded despite the fact that there are measures to verify and authenticate KCSE certificates. The study examined common forms of document fraud as well as current features used to secure paper documents. Therefore, the aim of this research was to develop a prototype based on digital signature and QR-code technique which would assist institutions in verification of certificates. Agile software development methodology was adopted in developing the prototype. This involved requirements gathering, architecture and design, development and testing. This research was conducted in Nairobi County, targeting a population of thirty seven accredited Universities. In the study both public and private universities were considered in order to eliminate any form of biasness. Data collection tools such as questionnaires were used to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. This data was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively and presented in pie charts and bar graphs and frequency tables with the aid of statistical tool SPSS. More than 87% of respondents said that the current features were not sufficient in preventing document fraud. In addition, 98% confirmed that a computer based system would greatly contribute towards detecting fake certificates. Consequently, after the prototype was developed and tested 78% of the respondents agreed that a digital system was leveraging on the current security measures and authentication processes

A Prototype for authentication of secondary school certificates: a case of Kenya certificate of secondary education

The demand for educated labor force has increased in developing countries like Kenya. Owing to this fact, more often Universities and training colleges in Kenya enroll students who want to further their education. Meeting the minimum entry requirements is key for one to get admitted into an institution of higher learning. However, the use of illegitimate secondary school certificates to join Universities in Kenya has been reported in political and business sectors. Perpetrators of this academic crime have succeeded to an extent of enjoying benefits of higher education, despite there being measures to authenticate secondary school certificates. The aim of this study was to develop a prototype that can be used by institutions of higher learning to authenticate secondary school certificates using QR-Code and digital signatures. Agile software development methodology was adopted to develop the prototype which included; requirements gathering, architecture and design, development and testing. This study targeted the Kenya National Examination Council, research department for data collection. Ten respondents were purposively selected in this department. Questionnaire was used as the main data collection tool for both qualitative and quantitative data. The findings indicated that 87% of respondents said that the current security features on the certificates were not sufficient to prevent document fraud. In addition, 98% said that a computer based system would help in detecting illegitimate certificates. During prototype testing 78% agreed that a computer system was leveraging on the existing methods of authentication. The study recommended the adoption of a computer system by the Kenya National Examination Council to help Universities and Colleges verify and authenticate secondary school certificates before enrollment of new student

High Capacity Analog Channels for Smart Documents

Widely-used valuable hardcopy documents such as passports, visas, driving licenses, educational certificates, entrance-passes for entertainment events etc. are conventionally protected against counterfeiting and data tampering attacks by applying analog security technologies (e.g. KINEGRAMS®, holograms, micro-printing, UV/IR inks etc.). How-ever, easy access to high quality, low price modern desktop publishing technology has left most of these technologies ineffective, giving rise to high quality false documents. The higher price and restricted usage are other drawbacks of the analog document pro-tection techniques. Digital watermarking and high capacity storage media such as IC-chips, optical data stripes etc. are the modern technologies being used in new machine-readable identity verification documents to ensure contents integrity; however, these technologies are either expensive or do not satisfy the application needs and demand to look for more efficient document protection technologies. In this research three different high capacity analog channels: high density data stripe (HD-DataStripe), data hiding in printed halftone images (watermarking), and super-posed constant background grayscale image (CBGI) are investigated for hidden com-munication along with their applications in smart documents. On way to develop high capacity analog channels, noise encountered from printing and scanning (PS) process is investigated with the objective to recover the digital information encoded at nearly maximum channel utilization. By utilizing noise behaviour, countermeasures against the noise are taken accordingly in data recovery process. HD-DataStripe is a printed binary image similar to the conventional 2-D barcodes (e.g. PDF417), but it offers much higher data storage capacity and is intended for machine-readable identity verification documents. The capacity offered by the HD-DataStripe is sufficient to store high quality biometric characteristics rather than extracted templates, in addition to the conventional bearer related data contained in a smart ID-card. It also eliminates the need for central database system (except for backup record) and other ex-pensive storage media, currently being used. While developing novel data-reading tech-nique for HD-DataStripe, to count for the unavoidable geometrical distortions, registra-tion marks pattern is chosen in such a way so that it results in accurate sampling points (a necessary condition for reliable data recovery at higher data encoding-rate). For more sophisticated distortions caused by the physical dot gain effects (intersymbol interfer-ence), the countermeasures such as application of sampling theorem, adaptive binariza-tion and post-data processing, each one of these providing only a necessary condition for reliable data recovery, are given. Finally, combining the various filters correspond-ing to these countermeasures, a novel Data-Reading technique for HD-DataStripe is given. The novel data-reading technique results in superior performance than the exist-ing techniques, intended for data recovery from printed media. In another scenario a small-size HD-DataStripe with maximum entropy is used as a copy detection pattern by utilizing information loss encountered at nearly maximum channel capacity. While considering the application of HD-DataStripe in hardcopy documents (contracts, official letters etc.), unlike existing work [Zha04], it allows one-to-one contents matching and does not depend on hash functions and OCR technology, constraints mainly imposed by the low data storage capacity offered by the existing analog media. For printed halftone images carrying hidden information higher capacity is mainly attributed to data-reading technique for HD-DataStripe that allows data recovery at higher printing resolution, a key requirement for a high quality watermarking technique in spatial domain. Digital halftoning and data encoding techniques are the other factors that contribute to data hiding technique given in this research. While considering security aspects, the new technique allows contents integrity and authenticity verification in the present scenario in which certain amount of errors are unavoidable, restricting the usage of existing techniques given for digital contents. Finally, a superposed constant background grayscale image, obtained by the repeated application of a specially designed small binary pattern, is used as channel for hidden communication and it allows up to 33 pages of A-4 size foreground text to be encoded in one CBGI. The higher capacity is contributed from data encoding symbols and data reading technique

A Blockchain-based Conceptual Model to Address Educational Certificate Verification Challenges in Tanzania

This research article was published in the Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 13, No. 5, 2023The proliferation of counterfeit educational certificates is an ongoing issue around the world, including Tanzania. The effect of this malpractice is detrimental to the credibility of education. Traditional strategies to prevent fake certificates are abortive, calling for a more sophisticated approach. Blockchain technology has recently emerged as an ideal solution to this problem due to its inherent attributes that ensure disintermediation, immutability, tamper proof, anonymity, transparency, consensus, security, and trust. However, most existing blockchain-based solutions lack crucial functionalities that are pertinent to the Tanzanian education system. This study unveiled the challenges faced by the current verification system in Tanzania and proposed a blockchain-based conceptual model to address them. The proposed model is based on blockchain, smart contracts, and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to investigate certification problems in Tanzania and modeling techniques were used to construct the conceptual model. The findings showed that the main challenges of the current verification system emanate from manual procedures, unverifiable credentials, susceptibility of centralized storage systems, disintegrated verification systems, revocation problems, difficulties in communication, and high dependency on the issuers. These challenges undermine certificate verification, impose a significant setback in the fight against forgeries, and create loopholes for forgeries to persist. It was conceptually demonstrated that these issues can be resolved through the proposed blockchain-based solution

A proof-of-proximity framework for device pairing in ubiquitous computing environments

Ad hoc interactions between devices over wireless networks in ubiquitous computing environments present a security problem: the generation of shared secrets to initialize secure communication over a medium that is inherently vulnerable to various attacks. However, these ad hoc scenarios also offer the potential for physical security of spaces and the use of protocols in which users must visibly demonstrate their presence and/or involvement to generate an association. As a consequence, recently secure device pairing has had significant attention from a wide community of academic as well as industrial researchers and a plethora of schemes and protocols have been proposed, which use various forms of out-of-band exchange to form an association between two unassociated devices. These protocols and schemes have different strengths and weaknesses – often in hardware requirements, strength against various attacks or usability in particular scenarios. From ordinary user‟s point of view, the problem then becomes which to choose or which is the best possible scheme in a particular scenario. We advocate that in a world of modern heterogeneous devices and requirements, there is a need for mechanisms that allow automated selection of the best protocols without requiring the user to have an in-depth knowledge of the minutiae of the underlying technologies. Towards this, the main argument forming the basis of this dissertation is that the integration of a discovery mechanism and several pairing schemes into a single system is more efficient from a usability point of view as well as security point of view in terms of dynamic choice of pairing schemes. In pursuit of this, we have proposed a generic system for secure device pairing by demonstration of physical proximity. Our main contribution is the design and prototype implementation of Proof-of-Proximity framework along with a novel Co- Location protocol. Other contributions include a detailed analysis of existing device pairing schemes, a simple device discovery mechanism, a protocol selection mechanism that is used to find out the best possible scheme to demonstrate the physical proximity of the devices according to the scenario, and a usability study of eight pairing schemes and the proposed system

Towards norms for accreditation of biobanks for human health and medical research:Compilation of existing guidelines into an ISO certification/accreditation norm-compatible format

In recent years, biobanks have evolved into professional infrastructures that acquire, validate, process, store, manage and distribute biological material of human origin to public or private end-users/researchers. This article (a) highlights the importance of quality assurance for both the biobank basic processes and sample annotation in order to ensure reliable results of research based on these samples, (b) suggests that certification according to international standards can contribute to the organization of the biobanking processes while accreditation can contribute to the organization of sample characterization/validation, and (c) provides a compilation of all existing guidelines against an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) format.</p

The impact of regulatory change on pharmacy practice: the implementation of the European Union falsified medicines directive in the United Kingdom

The use of technological solutions within the healthcare environment is becoming widespread. The implementation of the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) is a large-scale regulatory mandated example of this innovation to impact pharmacy practice in modern times. At the core of the innovation lies the practice of visual and digital authentication and verification by clinicians supported by the digital systems. Few implementation studies for policy-driven digital health system changes of this magnitude have taken place previously in the area of pharmacy practice. A preliminary literature review found that existing digital solutions focusing on prevention and detection of falsified medicines were limited, with little evidence of integrated national and international policy supported initiatives. In the empirical component of this study, I sought to i) explore the implementation process within community pharmacy; ii) understand the challenges and opportunities pertaining to adoption, scale-up and sustainability of FMD technologies at the local level; iii) place findings within a wider national and international policy context; and vi) inform clinicians’ and policy makers’ practice for future policy-driven driven innovations. Fieldwork consisted of a three phased approach including 10 elite and expert participant semi-structured interviews, semi-structured interviews with 17 clinicians at each study site, and 112 hours of ethnographic observations in participating community pharmacies. Analysis was informed by a multi-level theoretical lens known as the Non-adoption or Abandonment of technology by individuals and difficulties achieving Scale-up, Spread and Sustainability (NASSS) framework alongside Shiffman’s Political Priority Framework (PPF). My approach has generated a rich qualitative dataset comprising of interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes, video and digital imagery, and extracts from documents. My findings support a number of provisional conclusions. Primarily that my chosen framework, NASSS, is a suitable model in explaining the complexities with large-scale system implementation within pharmacy, becoming the first ever study to utilise this framework within this context. Secondly, for a digital solution of high complexity to be adopted, embedded, maintained, and interacted with by clinicians, the digital infrastructure must have capabilities to provide added value for clinical work. Thirdly, policy-driven reform is only an instigator for change, which also requires expert and clinician input to shape and develop policy at the front line of implementation