Asymmetric Fingerprinting Research Articles

Asymmetric fingerprinting protocol for vector map based on homomorphic encryption

ABSTRACT Most of the existing digital fingerprint algorithms for vector maps are symmetric fingerprint algorithms, and merchants may frame a legitimate buyer. An asymmetric fingerprinting protocol utilizing homomorphic encryption is proposed. First, the buyer encrypts his fingerprint. Then, this encrypted fingerprint and the merchant’s fingerprint are embedded into an encrypted vector map by the merchant. Finally, the encrypted data with the fingerprints of both parties is distributed to buyers. The buyer can use his private key to decrypt the encrypted data and get the Non-encrypted data with the fingerprints. In this way, merchants can track illegal users without the buyer’s fingerprint. Experimental results show that after various attacks, fingerprints can still be detected correctly.

Blockchain and Smart Contracts for Digital Copyright Protection

In a global context characterized by a pressing need to find a solution to the problem of digital copyright protection, buyer-seller watermarking protocols based on asymmetric fingerprinting and adopting a “buyer-friendly” approach have proven effective in addressing such a problem. They can ensure high levels of usability and security. However, they usually resort to trusted third parties (TTPs) to guarantee the protection process, and this is often perceived as a relevant drawback since TTPs may cause conspiracy or collusion problems, besides the fact that they are generally considered as some sort of “big brother”. This paper presents a buyer-seller watermarking protocol that can achieve the right compromise between usability and security without employing a TTP. The protocol is built around previous experiences conducted in the field of protocols based on the buyer-friendly approach. Its peculiarity consists of exploiting smart contracts executed within a blockchain to implement preset and immutable rules that run automatically under specific conditions without control from some kind of central authority. The result is a simple, usable, and secure watermarking protocol able to do without TTPs.

Homomorphic encryption domain asymmetric fingerprinting scheme for 3D models of oblique photography

AbstractExisting copyright protection schemes for 3D models of oblique photography predominantly utilize digital watermarking technology, most of which suffer from shortcomings such as the potential false accusation of legitimate users and the inability to effectively trace unauthorized distributors. In response to these challenges, this article proposes a homomorphic encryption domain asymmetric fingerprinting scheme for 3D models of oblique photography. Initially, the fingerprints to be embedded are collaboratively generated by the transacting parties, with the publisher remaining unaware of the user's actual fingerprint. This approach ensures the effective implementation of the asymmetric nature of the fingerprinting scheme. Subsequently, potential geometric and non‐geometric attacks are considered prior to fingerprint embedding. Robustness is enhanced for the proposed solution through relative coordinate transformations and normalization procedures. Ultimately, the embedding and extraction of fingerprints are achieved through the application of an effective bit parity check method, in conjunction with the vertex‐paradigm projection length mapping mechanism and the Paillier homomorphic encryption system, minimizing embedding distortion while ensuring data security. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution exhibits satisfying robustness against common manipulations, such as cropping, simplification, and geometric attacks. Additionally, the scheme effectively safeguards legitimate users from false accusations and accurately traces maliciously authorized users.

FingerChain: Copyrighted Multi-Owner Media Sharing by Introducing Asymmetric Fingerprinting Into Blockchain

Nowadays, more and more people are engaged in media creation and sharing for income. A common way to earn income is to upload media to an intermediary platform and then let the platform distribute some profits. However, intermediary platforms generally not only extract most of the profits, but also lack transparency in their operation, where owners lose direct control over the media. Nevertheless, individual sharing is not feasible for owners because each owner holds too little media to attract enough users independently. Blockchain is a solution to the above problem by gathering media from multiple owners without intermediaries. Though a lot of works have studied the use of blockchain for decentralized management of media data, many of them either did not consider sharing needs or tracing the illegal redistribution by malicious users. As for other works, most of them adopted symmetric digital watermarking in their blockchain networks, and thus fail to protect the rights of users who may be framed by malicious owners. Although asymmetric watermarking has been used by two existing works, the owner-side embedding pattern results in low owner-side efficiency. In view of this, we design a media sharing blockchain network in which the asymmetric fingerprinting (i.e., watermarking) with user-side embedding is introduced. Besides superior owner-side efficiency, our scheme also outperforms the above two ones in terms of TTP-free. Moreover, our scheme is designed to offer a user-friendly experience and support record traceability. The performance of our scheme is verified by both theoretical and experimental evaluations.

Fingerprint image encryption using phase retrieval algorithm in gyrator wavelet transform domain using QR decomposition

In this paper, we propose a novel optical asymmetric fingerprint image encryption technique that uses QR decomposition in gyrator wavelet transform domain. A fingerprint image is bonded with a phase mask generated with Gerchberg–Saxton phase retrieval algorithm, which is gyrator wavelet transformed. This output is further applied to QR decomposition scheme and different keys are generated through it. The process is iterated to enhance the level of security. A Haar wavelet has been used in the study. Different phase images, gyrator transform orders and the parameters of the wavelet help achieve imperceptibility and robustness. The asymmetric keys make the system attack free like Brute force attack, known plain text attack, and special attack. Numerical simulations carried out on a MATLAB platform demonstrate the security, privacy, and validity of the proposed encryption scheme.

PSUM: Peer-to-peer multimedia content distribution using collusion-resistant fingerprinting

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. The mass popularity is primarily driven by cost-effective distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy. An end user (buyer/peer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further distribute the content illegally. To date, different P2P distribution systems have been proposed that provide copyright and privacy protection at a cost of high computational burden at the merchant׳s and/or at the buyer׳s end and thus, making these systems impractical. In this paper, we propose PSUM, a P2P content distribution system which allows efficient distribution of large-sized multimedia content while preserving the security and privacy of merchants and buyers. The security of PSUM is ensured by using an asymmetric fingerprinting protocol based on collusion-resistant codes. In addition, PSUM enables buyers to obtain digital contents anonymously, but this anonymity can be revoked as soon as he/she is found guilty of copyright violation. The paper presents a thorough performance analysis of PSUM, through different experiments and simulations, and also analyzes several security compromising attacks and countermeasures.

Anticollusion solutions for asymmetric fingerprinting protocols based on client side embedding

In this paper, we propose two different solutions for making a recently proposed asymmetric fingerprinting protocol based on client-side embedding robust to collusion attacks. The first solution is based on projecting a client-owned random fingerprint, securely obtained through existing cryptographic protocols, using for each client a different random matrix generated by the server. The second solution consists in assigning to each client a Tardos code, which can be done using existing asymmetric protocols, and modulating such codes using a specially designed random matrix. Suitable accusation strategies are proposed for both solutions, and their performance under the averaging attack followed by the addition of Gaussian noise is analytically derived. Experimental results show that the analytical model accurately predicts the performance of a realistic system. Moreover, the results also show that the solution based on independent random projections outperforms the solution based on Tardos codes, for different choices of parameters and under different attack models.

TTP-Free Asymmetric Fingerprinting Based on Client Side Embedding

In this paper, we propose a solution for implementing an asymmetric fingerprinting protocol within a client-side embedding distribution framework. The scheme is based on two novel client-side embedding techniques that are able to reliably transmit a binary fingerprint. The first one relies on standard spread-spectrum like client-side embedding, while the second one is based on an innovative client-side informed embedding technique. The proposed techniques enable secure distribution of personalized decryption keys containing the Buyer’s fingerprint by means of existing asymmetric protocols, without using a trusted third party. Simulation results show that the fingerprint can be reliably recovered by using either nonblind decoding with standard embedding or blind decoding with informed embedding, and in both cases it is robust with respect to common attacks. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed scheme is the first solution addressing asymmetric fingerprinting within a client-side framework, representing a valid solution to both customer’s rights and scalability issues in multimedia content distribution.

An Asymmetric Matching Method for a Robust Binary Audio Fingerprinting

Audio fingerprinting has been successfully applied for the problems associated with the protection of intellectual property, management of large database and indexation of content. For a reliable fingerprinting system, improving fingerprint matching accuracy is crucial. In this letter, we try to improve a binary audio fingerprint matching performance by utilizing auxiliary information which is discarded while extracting fingerprint bits. Since it is not feasible to store all the auxiliary information in the fingerprint DB, we only utilize the auxiliary information obtained while extracting fingerprints from the input unknown audio. We call the proposed method an asymmetric fingerprint matching, since the auxiliary information is available only in one side. Experimental results show that the proposed asymmetric matching method is effective in improving fingerprint matching performance over the conventional Hamming distance.

Bandwidth efficient asymmetric fingerprinting scheme

SUMMARYIn asymmetric fingerprinting, the merchant can trace the traitors from a pirated multimedia content copy by means of the embedded unique fingerprint, while the customer is immune of being framed due to the asymmetric property. The existing schemes are inefficient in practice due to their high bandwidth usage. This paper proposes an asymmetric fingerprinting scheme that is efficient from the bandwidth usage point of view. First, multicast an efficient transport technology for one‐to‐many communication is exploited, which can reduce the bandwidth usage significantly. Second, symmetric encryption instead of public‐key encryption is performed on the multimedia content, which can also reduce the complexity and communication cost. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Asymmetric fingerprinting based on 1-out-of-n oblivious transfer

In asymmetric fingerprinting, the merchant can trace the traitors from a pirated copy by means of the embedded unique fingerprint, while the customer is immune of being framed due to the asymmetric property. In this letter, we propose an asymmetric fingerprinting scheme based on 1-out-of-n oblivious transfer (OT1 n), which is efficient from the bandwidth usage point of view. First, multicast that is an efficient transport technology for one-to-many communication is exploited, which can reduce the bandwidth usage significantly. Second, symmetric encryption instead of public-key encryption is performed on the multimedia content, which also can reduce the complexity and communication cost.

Bandwidth efficient asymmetric fingerprinting based on one-out-of-two oblivious transfer

Fingerprinting is an emerging technology to protect multimedia data from piracy, where each distributed copy is labelled with unique identification information. To protect the rights of both the merchant and the customer, the fingerprinting is designed to be asymmetric, where the merchant can trace the traitor by means of the embedded fingerprint and the customer is immune to being framed due to the asymmetric property. This paper proposes an asymmetric fingerprinting scheme that is efficient from the bandwidth usage point of view, where a one-out-of-two oblivious transfer protocol is used to achieve the asymmetric property. In our scheme, symmetric encryption instead of public-key encryption, is performed on the multimedia data, which can reduce the complexity and communication cost. In addition, multicast that is an efficient transport technology for one-to-many communication is exploited, which can reduce the bandwidth usage significantly.

On the Implementation of Spread Spectrum Fingerprinting in Asymmetric Cryptographic Protocol

Digital fingerprinting of multimedia contents involves the generation of a fingerprint, the embedding operation, and the realization of traceability from redistributed contents. Considering a buyer's right, the asymmetric property in the transaction between a buyer and a seller must be achieved using a cryptographic protocol. In the conventional schemes, the implementation of a watermarking algorithm into the cryptographic protocol is not deeply discussed. In this paper, we propose the method for implementing the spread spectrum watermarking technique in the fingerprinting protocol based on the homomorphic encryption scheme. We first develop a rounding operation which converts real values into integer and its compensation, and then explore the tradeoff between the robustness and communication overhead. Experimental results show that our system can simulate Cox's spread spectrum watermarking method into asymmetric fingerprinting protocol.

Fingerprinting Protocol for On-Line Trade Using Information Gap between Buyer and Merchant

The homomorphic property of the public key cryptosystem has been exploited in order to achieve asymmetric fingerprinting such that only a buyer can obtain fingerprinted content. However, this requires many computations and a wide-band network channel because the entire uncompressed content must be encrypted based on the public key cryptosystem. In this paper, instead of the homomorphic property, we introduce the management of the enciphering keys for the symmetric cryptosystem. Based on a buyer's identity, a trusted center issues the buyer a partial sequence which is one of the two elements in the entire sequence. Although a merchant shares the entire sequence with the center, he cannot extract the buyer's key sequence from it. Such an information gap enables our protocol to be asymmetric and efficient. For each packet of content, the merchant produces two marked packets that contains a 0 or 1 information bit, and they are enciphered using the two elements from the entire sequence. Subsequently, the buyer obtains the two ciphertexts (the encrypted marked packets) containing the information bits of his identity. Since the merchant does not know the ciphertext decrypted by the buyer, an asymmetric property is achieved. In our protocol, before trade between a buyer and a merchant, the merchant can produce and compress the marked packets; this enables the reduction of both the computational costs for the encryption and the amount of data for transmission. Since only the enciphering operation is performed by a merchant in the on-line protocol, real-time operation may be possible.

Cryptographic methods for collusion-secure fingerprinting of digital data

We give a survey of cryptographic techniques for collusion-secure fingerprinting. Fingerprinting of digital data is a method for copyright protection in which an individual version of the data to be sold is created for each buyer by the introduction of minor errors, called marks, into the data. If the method guarantees that even collusions of dishonest buyers are not able to create versions of the data which are untraceable it is called collusion-secure fingerprinting. D. Boneh and J. Shaw gave [Proc. of CRYPTO'95, Springer, Berlin, 1995, pp. 425–465] a model for collusion-secure symmetric fingerprinting and the most efficient method known so far for its realization. B. Pfitzmann and M. Schunter extended this model [Proc. of EUROCRYPT'96, Springer, Berlin, 1996, pp. 84–95] by the invention of asymmetric fingerprinting which protects innocent buyers from accusation by cheating merchants. We will explain techniques presented in Ref. I. Biehl and B. Meyer [Proc. of STACS'97, Springer, Berlin, 1997, pp. 399–412] which allow to use each arbitrary symmetric fingerprinting scheme for the construction of an asymmetric fingerprinting scheme of almost the same efficiency (measured in the number of watermarks included in the marked data). Moreover, we explain the idea of anonymous fingerprinting presented by B. Pfitzmann and M. Waidner [Proc. of EUROCRYPT'97, Springer, Berlin, 1997, pp. 88–102] which achieves collusion-secure fingerprinting of data while protecting the anonymity of the buyers. Finally, we sketch a construction for anonymous fingerprinting schemes.