QR code manipulation has become a particularly pernicious threat
QR code manipulation has become a particularly pernicious threat as it preys on our desire to perform tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Silicon Valley Bank (The bank where the Silicon Valley folk go for mortgages, corporate checking venture funding, treasury services, etc.) recently published an article highlighting the rise of Cybercrime and how to protect organisations against the latest threats.
QR codes are easy to use, inexpensive, and easy to counterfeit and manipulate. As system designers all of us like to keep things cheap and easy to use, but QR codes were not designed for security.
QR codes were launched in 1993 as a way to print machine readable car part numbers – no need for encryption, no concept in the QR for security or protecting data. No part of the QR design to mitigate against deliberate malice and the scale or sophistication of cyberthreat that people and companies need to deal with today.
Putting Countermarks on products and documents can convey information safely and securely – Countermarks were designed for exactly that purpose.
We developed Countermark to do what a QR code does, but in a secure way, with full encryption, full traceability for creation and reading.
As a backup, Countermark codes are human readable, giving the ability to reference the Countermark in correspondence and other documents.
Link to Silicon Valley Bank article:
