Digital 3D barcode image as a container for data hiding using steganography

Abstract

Steganography is a technique of concealing private information in a cover medium in such a way that it becomes impossible for the third person to come to know that some confidential information is contained in the cover envelope. In today's era with the inception of new emerging technologies, barcodes has become one of the most popular methods to provide a mechanism for protecting sensitive information.3D barcodes are used to accommodate high data rates by making use of third dimension as a color. 3D barcodes serves as the most reliable technique to hide data because they do not make use of any error correction levels due to the reason that it is very difficult to alter the encoded information. This paper introduces the concept of data hiding in barcodes by using color as third dimension. The process is classified into different categories and performance is evaluated by using various statistical parameters.