A Source and Ownership Identification Framework for Mobile-Based Messenger Applications

Abstract

This paper proposed a transform domain watermarking scheme for ownership and source identification for mobile phone-based messenger applications. In this scheme, text message is used as a watermark signal, which contains user’s 10-digit contact number and secret data representing specific messenger application (i.e. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.). Walsh orthogonal codes are used to generate the application-specific watermark signal, which is then merged with user’s cell number to generate complete watermark data. Block-wise slantlet transform is performed on each uniform non-overlapping block of the host image for watermark embedding to achieve robustness against signal processing attacks. Three copies of watermark are inserted to make the scheme more reliable. The correct app identification enables us to know, whether a message is forwarded/not. The correct user identification enables us to know the origin of message. Experimental results signified that the method is robust enough against general signal processing attacks and the objective of the method (successful detection of the user and messenger) is achieved.