Print matter authentication based on anti-counterfeiting techniques has received continuously increasing concern from academia and industry. However, the existing printing anti-counterfeiting solutions often have the defects of poor identification experience, high cost, or weak anti-counterfeiting ability, and cannot achieve pre-sale anti-counterfeiting. Therefore, a novel steganography-based pattern for print matter anti-counterfeiting by smartphone cameras is proposed in this study. Firstly, every pixel in the original binary message image (such as QR code) is replaced by a square pixel block with the same binary gray value of 0 or 255 (the first-level expansion). Secondly, the obtained image is encrypted based on the logistic chaotic sequence, and then scrambled by Arnold transform. Lastly, once again every pixel in the generated image is replaced with a square pixel block (the second-level expansion), the size and gray value of which can be set to control the semi-fragile ability to distinguish an originally printed pattern from its illegitimate copy. If the message extracted from the printed pattern through the inverse procedure is complete enough to decode and read, the pattern is assumed to be an original print. Experimental results verify the advancement and effectiveness of the proposed scheme in distinguishing the copied pattern.

At present, anti-counterfeiting schemes based on the combination of anti-counterfeiting patterns and two-dimensional codes is a research hotspot in digital anti-counterfeiting technology. However, many existing identification schemes rely on special equipment such as scanners and microscopes; there are few methods for authentication that use smartphones. In particular, the ability to classify blurry pattern images is weak, leading to a low recognition rate when using mobile terminals. In addition, the existing methods need a sufficient number of counterfeit patterns for model training, which is difficult to acquire in practical scenarios. Therefore, an authentication scheme for an anti-counterfeiting pattern captured by smartphones is proposed in this paper, featuring a single classifier consisting of two modules. A feature extraction module based on U-Net extracts the features of the input images; then, the extracted feature is input to a one-class classification module. The second stage features a boundary-optimized OCSVM classification method. The classifier only needs to learn positive samples to achieve effective identification. The experimental results show that the proposed approach has a better ability to distinguish the genuine and counterfeit anti-counterfeiting pattern images. The precision and recall rate of the approach reach 100%, and the recognition rate for the blurry images of the genuine anti-counterfeiting patterns is significantly improved.