AN INTERACTIVE QR RESEARCH EXHIBIT
HideAndSeen
What can a QR code carry that an ordinary scanner never shows?
Interactive demonstrations of QR steganography and steganalysis drawn from published research. Inspect the structures beneath the black squares, then test how easily hidden information becomes evidence.
Enter the first exhibit00 / THESIS
Hidden is not the same as unfindable.
A QR code is not simply a URL represented by black squares. It is a stack of choices: segmentation, data codewords, padding, error correction, masks, modules, and sometimes structure below the scale an ordinary camera preserves.
Each layer can create alternate representations. Every hiding method also creates assumptions, tradeoffs, or artifacts. Understanding the cover format is what turns invisible information back into visible evidence.
01-14 / EXHIBITS
Fourteen ways to look underneath
Each exhibit is tagged with how much of it is real. LIVE — the mechanism is implemented here and the QR output is genuine. MODEL — a teaching model where the cited physical technique is not reproduced exactly. DATA — a measured result from this repository's own experiments. Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary.
THE ANALYST'S LABEL
Ask four questions of every symbol.
What the scanner sees
The ordinary semantic payload.
What changed underneath
The representation or physical structure.
What a second reader recovers
The additional signal, if one exists.
How an analyst can notice
The assumptions, statistics, or standards check.
HOW QR WORKS
Read the symbol as a structure, not a picture.
Toggle finder patterns, timing tracks, format information, data modules, masking, terminator bits, and padding on an actual generated QR symbol.