All printed documents/credentials are potentially subject to counterfeiting and forgery. Conventional counterfeiting solutions such as watermarking or printing using special-quality paper are not cost-effective. Other widespread low-cost solutions such as certifications via authorized chops/stamps only provide a false sense of security/authenticity.
In this work, we propose Authenticated Papers: a cost-effective, secure solution for authenticating paper-based documents/credentials using off-the-shelf handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets.
The key idea is to extend existing 2D barcodes, e.g. the QR-code, to carry a large amount of self-describing, and most importantly, authenticated data of all types containing text, image as well as other binary ones. By embedding the Authenticated 2D Barcode as an integral part of a paper-based document, the authenticity of the document can be readily verified by comparing its content with the corresponding digitally-signed content contained in the Authenticated 2D Barcode.

For the Authenticated Paper system and its applications, we have filed a regular U.S. patent application, titled "Method and Apparatus for Generating and/or Processing 2D Barcode", USPTO application number US 13/790,536 in March, 2013.

The "Authenticated Papers" project is the R&D category Winner of the 13th Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Award (APICTA).
APICTA (http://www.apicta.org) is an annual International ICT competition among 17 Asia Pacific Economies.

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