Security Issues for 2D Barcodes Ticketing Systems

The paper presents a solution for endcoding/decoding access to the subway public transportation systems. First part of the paper is dedicated through section one and two to the most used 2D barcodes used in the market – QR and DataMatrix. The sample for DataMatrix is author propietary and the QR sample is from the QR standard [2]. The section three presents MMS and Digital Rights Management topics used for issuing the 2D barcodes tickets. The second part of the paper, starting with section four shows the architecture of Subway Ticketing Systems and the proposed procedure for the ticket issuing. The conclusions identify trends of the security topics in the public transportation systems. Key-Words: 2D barcode, Ticketing System, DataMatrix code – ISO/IEC 16022, QR code – ISO/IEC 18004, MMS – Multimedia Message Service, M-DRM – Mobile Digital Rights Management , 2D Barcode Automatic Ticketing System – 2D BATS 1 DataMatrix – ISO/IEC 16022 Parts from this section are copyrighted by ISO/IEC 16022 [1]. Data Matrix is a 2D matrix symbology. According with [1], there are 2 types of symbologies:  ECC 200 which uses Reed-Solomon error correction. ECC 200 is recommended for new applications.  ECC 000 140 with some levels of convolutional error correction, referred to as ECC 000, ECC050, ECC 080, ECC 100 and ECC 140 respectively. ECC 000 140 should only be used in closed applications where a single party controls both the production and reading of the symbols and is responsible for overall system encoding/decoding procedures. The characteristics of Data Matrix are [1]:  Encodable character set:  values 0 127 in accordance with ISO/IEC 646, i.e. all 128 ASCII characters (equivalent to the U.S. national version of ISO 646)  Values 128 255 in accordance with ISO 8859-1. These are referred to as extended ASCII.  Representation of data: A dark module is a binary one and a light module is a zero.  Symbol size in modules (not including quiet zone):  ECC 200 is for 10 x 10 to 144 x 144 even values only  ECC 000 – 140 is for 9 x 9 to 49 x 49, odd values only  Data characters per symbol (for maximum symbol size in ECC200):  Alphanumeric data: up to 2335 characters  8-bit byte data: 1555 characters  Numeric data: 3116 digits.  Selectable error correction:  ECC 200: Reed-Solomon error correction.  ECC 000 140: Four levels of convolutional error correction, plus the option to apply only error detection  Code type: 2D Matrix  Orientationindependence: Yes ECC 200 alignment patterns for 32x32 square symbol – figure 1.1: Journal of Mobile, Embedded and Distributed Systems, vol. III, no. 1, 2011