1.

Introduction
In today s world, security is a big issue. So securing important data is very esse
ntial. In order to protect the data so that it is not intercepted or misused for
any kind of unauthorized use, we use encryption algorithms and one such encrypt
ion technique is QR code.
Quick Response codes are 2-dimensional barcodes that visually encode bits of inf
ormation represented as black square dots placed on a white square grid. The emb
edded QR code may be sent to destination or may be saved for future use. QR Code
s are mainly used to convey or store messages because they have higher or large
storage capacity than any other normal conventional barcode. In this project I
have tried to understand about how to encrypt a message and then embed in QR C
ode and decrypting the encoded message.
2.

Motivation
QR code (Quick Response Code) is a two-dimensional matrix type barcode. Des
igned by the
automotive industry in Japan and has gained popularity due to its large sto
rage capacity , fast
readability and its compression capacity. It has become very common in the
mobile industry where
one can scan a QR code to download an App. QR code is detected as a 2-dimen
sional digital
image. There are plenty of apps that take an image of the QR code using th
e device camera and
process them.
This application requires lesser storage space than the present application
s available on the play
store. It will also have encoder and decoder in the same application and is
not dependent on other
applications as other encoding applications available on play store.
3.
Literature Review
QR Code has wide application in different industries. Lifestyle companies u
se QR codes for
marketing while airlines use it in boarding passes to encrypt large amount
of information on a
paper. QR codes can be designed using monochromatic colors like
cyan, magenta, yellow(CMY) in order to encrypt more information than black
and white QR
Codes. Color QR codes are even more secure but their implementation is very
limited as the colors
used should be distinguishable. Microsoft Tag which is similar to QR cod
es has more options of
customization and is better than QR Codes in many aspects but can be only
scanned by Microsoft
Tag reader which limits its use world wide.
Typical barcode can only hold a maximum of 20 digits, whereas as QR Code can hol
d up to 7,089 characters. QR Codes are capable of encoding the same amount of da
ta in approximately one tenth the space of a traditional bar code. A great featu
re of QR Codes is that they do not need to be scanned from one particular angle,
as QR Codes can be read regardless of their positioning. QR Codes can be easily
decoded with a mobile phone with appropriate software. They even work on alphan
umeric formats while barcodes work on numeric format only.