Zhang Deyu, a senior engineer of China Institute of Aviation Technology, who has long been concerned about QR code technology, said in an interview recently that QR codes developed by Japanese companies are mainly used in China. Although Japanese companies with QR code patents claim not to charge patent fees, foreign companies released their technical standards for free use during the promotion period. Once the scale is formed or the technology is updated, it has become a practice to charge high fees. In addition, experts said that the management loopholes and technical monopoly of QR codes have threatened China's information security and the healthy development of the industry, which needs urgent attention. It is suggested that policies should be introduced to support the domestic QR code standards, so that the information security risks in the QR code industry can be controlled.
Two-dimensional code hidden trap
Ms. Wang, the owner of Jiaxing online store in Zhejiang Province, recently scanned the QR code with her mobile phone, but the mobile phone webpage has not been displayed. Ms. Wang, who felt that something was wrong, logged into Alipay and Taobao accounts and found that the funds in the account of 1 10,000 yuan and the credit loan of 24,000 yuan were transferred away. Just when the police made a record, the criminals transferred the credit loan1.20 thousand yuan. According to the police investigating the case, Ms. Wang scanned the QR code and clicked on the link to be implanted with Trojan virus, resulting in the theft of funds.
Ms. Li, who lives in Wuyi Road, Taiyuan City, recently scanned the QR code of a coupon website and her mobile phone was charged 120 yuan. The public security organs in Shanxi Province said that in recent years, the number of cases of using QR codes to defraud and disseminate bad information has increased significantly, and the new situation brought about by loopholes in QR code management needs to be highly concerned.
In Weibo, the reporter searched for a QR code that declared "get a discount movie ticket". After scanning with a mobile phone, I found that there is no movie ticket information in this QR code, but it shows the domain name address of an obscene website.
Two-dimensional code (QR code) is a bar code technology invented by Japan in 1970s, which records data information graphically. Compared with the widely used one-dimensional bar code, two-dimensional bar code has more information storage capacity, so it is widely used in many fields such as commodity traceability, logistics tracking, identity authentication, data anti-counterfeiting and so on. With the popularity of mobile Internet in China, scanning two-dimensional code with mobile phone to obtain information can avoid complicated input, so it is favored by mobile phone users.
According to industry insiders, for a long time, the international two-dimensional code technical standards have been monopolized by a few technical standards such as Japanese two-dimensional code and American PDF4 17 code, and the QR two-dimensional code standard formulated by Denso Corporation of Japan is mainly used in China. With the rapid popularization of Japanese QR codes in many fields of domestic production and life, it brings three major challenges to the security of China's information industry:
Management loopholes cause huge information security risks. Huang Changqing, director of Wuhan Information Industry Office, said that Japanese QR codes lack a unified application management system, so any organization or organization can make and publish QR codes at will. It is difficult to tell whether the information contained in the QR code is legal only from the appearance. This kind of management gap is easy to be exploited by criminals, which makes bad information such as network virus and pornographic reaction freely released and spread by means of QR code, which seriously threatens China's information security.
Patent traps can easily lead to the same mistakes in the industry. Zhang Deyu said that although Japanese companies with QR code patents claim that they don't charge patent fees, it has become a practice for foreign companies to release their technical standards for free use during the promotion period, and charge high fees immediately after the scale is formed or the technology is updated. Zhang Deyu said that the patent risk of QR code is the same as that of DVD industry. When China's DVD production accounted for 90% of the world's total, the global DVD patent technology owners jointly levied high patent fees on China's production enterprises, which led to the rapid shrinkage of China's very prosperous DVD industry. Similarly, mobile phones also have GMS standards, and these patent traps cost us a lot of tuition.
Technology monopoly seriously damages the interests of affiliated enterprises. Experts said that the Japanese QR code has three positioning points. If any one of them is defaced, the information can't be accurately read except the reading equipment produced by Denso Corporation of Japan. In logistics, retail and other industries, bar code fouling is extremely common, which means that a large number of QR code users will be forced to buy expensive Japanese equipment. This technology monopoly will undoubtedly seriously damage the interests of enterprises related to QR codes in China.
Popularization and storage of domestic codes
Faced with the threat of Japanese QR codes expanding in China, many domestic institutions and enterprises have set foot in this field, and formulated two-dimensional code standards such as Bellon code and Hanxin code. Among them, the GM code (grid matrix code) developed by Wuhan Sigan Technology Co., Ltd. has been approved as an international standard and a national standard, successfully breaking the monopoly of foreign enterprises in the technical standard of QR code. However, the reporter learned that due to the late start of research and development, misunderstanding and other factors, this standard has great difficulties in actual promotion.
Zhang Wei, president of Sigan Group, said that the transgenic coding independently developed by Sigan in recent years 10 not only has all independent intellectual property rights, but also has the advantages of anti-fouling, anti-distortion and low cost, and has been successfully applied to the electronic management of WISCO materials and the traceability of fresh food in supermarkets in Zhong Bai.
The reporter saw in many supermarkets in Zhong Bai that the price labels of bundles of fresh vegetables were printed with square transgenic codes with an area of about four square centimeters. Different from the common Japanese QR code, this QR code consists of 25 small cells, and there are no anchor points at the corners. With the mobile phone software, the production base of this bundle of vegetables, the varieties and sources of fertilizers and pesticides used, the picking date and so on 10 are displayed on the mobile phone screen.
Experts believe that the independent research and development value of domestic genetically modified codes lies in the controllable security risks of QR codes.
Experts such as Wang, deputy chief engineer of China Institute of Electronic Technology Standardization under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that although the genetically modified code in China has complete intellectual property rights, the research and development of QR code technology in China started late. Due to the lack of corresponding policy support and public opinion guidance, most users, including government departments, could not realize the many pitfalls in Japanese QR code and blindly worshipped foreign things when choosing QR code services, which not only brought many security risks, but also increased the difficulty of promoting domestic QR code standards.
Urgent need for policy support
According to Wang and other insiders, the QR code industry is mainly composed of three-level enterprises: first, hardware manufacturers that develop, manufacture and provide QR code decoding equipment; Second, IT application providers that provide mobile phone coding and decoding tools for merchants; The third is the application solution provider of QR code products.
The domestic QR code industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Roughly speaking, the scale of upstream and downstream industries such as QR code production, release and identification driven by China has exceeded 200 billion yuan. However, compared with the high penetration rate of more than 90% in Japan, the United States and other countries, China's QR code industry still has huge development space and great strategic significance. Therefore, in the 12th Five-Year Plan of the Internet of Things of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, QR code, electronic tag and sensor are listed as three key technologies to promote the development of the Internet of Things.
At the same time, promoting the use of domestic technical standards in the core information technology field has become a common practice in all countries of the world. Dou Yi, deputy general manager of Wuhan Silicon Sense, said that in order to prevent information leakage and prevent technology from being controlled, the US government and military institutions all use the PDF4 17 two-dimensional code standard developed by American local enterprises; On the premise that foreign QR code standards are free, South Korea also firmly supports its own MagicCode. In this regard, Huang Changqing and others suggested that China should formulate relevant supporting policies to guide the large-scale popularization and application of genetically modified codes in China.
The first is the unified coding standard. On the basis of systematically analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of many domestic two-dimensional code standards, the competent department of information industry clearly and uniformly promotes the domestic two-dimensional code standards. By encouraging industry alliances to establish a standardized platform and introduce coding and application standards in various fields, it also provides netizens with safer and more standardized coding and code scanning software, effectively regulates the market, promotes the QR code craze to form a more stable business model, and at the same time improves the public's interest and confidence in domestic QR codes.
The second is support in key areas. In the case that it is not appropriate to directly intervene in the market, it does not support or advocate the promotion of foreign two-dimensional code technical standards such as Japanese two-dimensional code in China. At the same time, it makes full use of the "dark rules" in the field of technical standards, and advocates giving priority to the use of domestic universal code standards in the core areas of military and government procurement, public services and other financial expenditures, so as to improve the awareness rate and share of domestic two-dimensional codes as soon as possible.
The third is to organize pilot exploration. Zhang Deyu said that relevant state ministries and commissions can set up special funds to serve as pilot units in Wuhan, Nanjing and Xiamen, which have achieved initial results in the construction of smart cities in China, to promote the inclusion of domestic QR code standards in the pilot construction of smart cities, and to guide all localities to strengthen the application of domestic QR code standards in the field of public services. At the same time, encourage the society and enterprises to increase the research and innovation of QR code technology on the basis of the existing domestic general code technology standards, and enhance the core competitiveness of China's QR code industry.