Copy Protection Research Articles

A Robust DCT-Based Scheme for Watermarking Deep Neural Networks

This paper proposes a new robust scheme to provide copy protection services to Deep Nural Network (DNN) models using digital watermarks. The rationale of the proposed technique is that robustness can be achieved by embedding a large watermark that can span the whole watermark. If an adversary attempts to destroy the watermark, he will end up destroying the DNN model. However, maximizing the embedding capacity will strongly degrade the performance of the DNN model. To control the performance-capacity-robustness trade-of, the proposed scheme utilizes the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) due to its strong compaction property, which becomes even stronger when applied to correlated segments of data. Therefore, the proposed technique extracts the DNN weights and groups them within correlated segments before applying the DCT. The experimental results have proven the effectiveness of the proposed DNN watermarking scheme as it was able to embed 1.73 Mb of data with only a 1.4% drop in the classification accuracy of a standard Residual Neural Network with 21 Convolutional layers.

The very first collecting society for games

In May 2023, game – The German Games Industry Association – founded the world’s first collecting society for games, the VHG – Verwertungsgesellschaft für die Hersteller von Games. The purpose of this collecting society is to assert the remuneration claims of the producers of games in Germany for legally permitted private copying. In Germany, as in many other continental European countries, there is – unlike fair use in common law – an appropriate remuneration for the limitation of the rights of authors and ancillary copyrights for private copies. These remuneration claims can only be asserted by a collecting society, which means that neither a publisher or developer nor any author itself could assert such claims. There are various legally permitted copies of games made in everyday life, for example, in the form of Let’s Plays, walkthroughs, highlights, role plays, Shadow Plays, recordings for support, in esports broadcasts, or also in the form of screenshots taken by millions of users. Copies of the game itself and installations are not covered by the copyright exceptions, because the law does not provide legal permission in the case of software or if technical copy protection measures (TPMs) are in place. The relevant remuneration claims focus on capturing, filming, or photographing the audiovisual components of the games (on screen). The remuneration is already paid by the manufacturers and importers of devices and storage media with which the reproductions are made. The payments are collected by the Central Organisation for Private Copying Rights and distributed to all rightsholders whose content is privately copied. Since the administration of remuneration claims is subject to a collecting society, a new collecting society for games had to be founded for the games industry to participate in the private copying remuneration.

Uncloneable Cryptography

In memory of Stephen Wiesner, 1942--2021.

Quantum private function evaluation

Private function evaluation (PFE) is a task that aims to obtain the output of a function while keeping the function secret. So far its quantum analog has not yet been articulated. In this study, we initiate the study of quantum PFE (QPFE), the quantum analog of classical PFE. We give a formal definition of QPFE and present two schemes together with their security proofs. We then give an experimental demonstration of the scheme. Finally we apply QPFE to quantum copy protection to illustrate its usage.

Electroplated Micro-Labelling as Copy Protection

In order to achieve good product quality in electroplating, disturbance variables such as the "dog bone" effect must be avoided. In this work, this approach was used to develop a method for marking as product protection. With a defined structure and optimal parameters, it is possible to deposit unique visually non-differentiable layers on suitable substrates. The deposited layers and their local distribution were characterized by confocal laser microscopy, X-ray fluorescence analysis and laser interference measurements and analyzed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. It thus provides interested parties with an essentially traditional process that can lead to new innovations with the chosen approach.

Health Record Security Through Multiple Watermarking on Fused Medical Images

Nowadays, there is an increasing tendency to fuse multi-modal medical image due to the high diagnostic accuracy and assessment. However, the distribution of these images and more generally, health records may bring serious copy-violation issues in healthcare applications. Further, a massive amount of electronic health records is uploaded on the cloud due to the low cost and high usability. However, outsourcing these records to the cloud may greatly increase security and privacy issues. The present article develops medical image fusion-based watermarking scheme in dual tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT)-singular value decomposition (SVD) domain. Here, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images are partitioned into a sequence of high frequencies and low frequency by non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) to obtain a fused image as a carrier. To enhance the authenticity, spatial and transform domain-based embedding is conducted to conceal multi-marks into carrier image. Finally, improved encryption scheme is employed to obtain a secure marked carrier image. Objective and subjective evaluations indicate a strong robustness effect (43.64%) of the proposed algorithm compared to other methods with remarkable invisibility, payload, and security. To the best of our knowledge, studies of image fusion-based dual watermarking and encryption have not yet been developed in combination with spatial and transform domain schemes for copy protection and ownership of health records, since it is also suitable for applications in the cloud.

How Can Proprietary Software Firms Take Advantage Over Open Source Communities? Another Story of Profitable Piracy

This paper analyzes the strategic incentives of a proprietary software (PS) firm to manipulate software copy protection in response to the diffusion of pirate proprietary software (PPS) copies, as well as software compatibility/incompatibility with an alternative open source software (OSS) solution. We show that the existence of software piracy enables the PS firm to achieve higher profits than when piracy is prevented. A key mechanism at work is that investing in software copy protection allows the PS firm to increase the price of its PS product. From a regulatory point of view, we find that software compatibility with the OSS solution is a necessary condition to achieve a welfare-improving equilibrium, whereas the welfare-enhancing feature of piracy is not always proved.JEL classification: L11, L82, L86.

A Modified Key Sifting Scheme With Artificial Neural Network Based Key Reconciliation Analysis in Quantum Cryptography

Quantum Cryptography emerged from the limitations of classical cryptography. It will play a vital role in information security after the availability of expected powerful quantum computers. Still many quantum primitives like quantum money, blind quantum computation, quantum copy protection, etc. are theoretical as they require a completely functional quantum computer for their implementation. But one prominent quantum cryptographic primitive, the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is possible with current technology. The QKD is a key establishment system having several stages namely raw key generation, key sifting, key reconciliation, and privacy amplification. In this paper, an efficient key sifting scheme has been developed. Successful simulation has shown that the proposed modified key sifting scheme requires less time to build the sifted key compared to the sifted key in conventional BB84 protocol in most cases. This paper also represents Tree Parity Machine (TPM) based key reconciliation analysis using different learning algorithms such as Hebbian, Anti-Hebbian, and Random-Walk. This reconciliation analysis helps to choose the optimum learning algorithm for Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based key reconciliation in future Quantum Key Distribution systems.

On the Properties of Algebraic Geometric Codes as Copy Protection Codes

On the Properties of Algebraic Geometric Codes as Copy Protection Codes

A survey of color image watermarking: State-of-the-art and research directions

Color image watermarking has achieved great success in various applications such as copy protection, content authentication, tamper detection and recovery, etc. The present paper provides a detailed overview of watermarking along with its characteristics, evaluation metrics, and current applications. We then provide a comprehensive survey of different approaches along with their merits and limitations. Furthermore, we summarize each of the approaches in detail, including objectives, goals, embedding location, evaluation metrics, and weaknesses, and discuss recent challenges and their possible solutions. We believe this paper will provide readers with comprehensive insight into the field of watermarking research.

Robust Digital Watermarking Techniques for Copyright Protection of Digital Data: A Survey

Digital watermarking has emerged as a potential solution to the copyright protection related issues of digital data. This paper presents key paradigms of research in robust watermarking techniques for copyright protection, copy protection, and authentication of digital multimedia. The main issues that derive research in robust watermarking schemes are imperceptibility, security, and robustness. The purpose of this paper is to provide a gist of robust watermarking schemes in the transform domain with the help of some brief theories proposed in the literature. Frequency transformation techniques such as DCT, DFT, and DWT, RDWT have been the most widely used methods to develop robust watermarking algorithms in the transform domain. The general framework of the watermarking system, recent application areas, characteristics, classification of information hiding methods, and various performance evaluation parameters considered by researchers have also been presented in this review. Broadly, this study reviews and compare performance summary of the several state-of-art robust watermarking methods available. This survey paper will be beneficial for the researchers keen to contribute to the field of robust digital watermarking particularly in the transform domain.

Safe and Policy Oriented Secure Android-Based Industrial Embedded Control System

Android is gaining popularity as the operating system of embedded systems and recent demands of its application on industrial control are steadily increasing. However, its feasibility is still in question due to two major drawbacks: safety and security. In particular, ensuring the safe operation of industrial control systems requires the system to be governed by stringent temporal constraints and should satisfy real-time requirements. In this sense, we explore the real-time characteristics of Xenomai to guarantee strict temporal deadlines, and provide a viable method integrating Android processes to real-time tasks. Security is another issue that affects safety due to the increased connectivity in industrial systems provoking a higher risk of cyber and hardware attacks. Herein, we adopted a hardware copy protection chip and enforced administrative security policies in the booting process and the Android application layer. These policies ensure that the developed system is protected from physical tampering and unwanted Android applications. The articulacy of the administrative policies is demonstrated through experiments. The developed embedded system is connected to an industrial EtherCAT motion device network exhibiting operability on an actual industrial application. Real-time performance was evaluated in terms of schedulability and responsiveness, which are critical in determining the safety and reliability of the control system.

On the Properties of Algebraic Geometric Codes as Copy Protection Codes

Traceability schemes which are applied to the broadcast encryption can prevent unauthorized parties from accessing the distributed data. In a traceability scheme a distributor broadcasts the encrypted data and gives each authorized user unique key and identifying word from selected error-correcting code for decrypting. The following attack is possible in these schemes: groups of c malicious users are joining into coalitions and gaining illegal access to the data by combining their keys and identifying codewords to obtain pirate key and codeword. To prevent this attacks, classes of error-correcting codes with special c-FP and c-TA properties are used. In particular, c -FP codes are codes that make direct compromise of scrupulous users impossible and c -TA codes are codes that make it possible to identify one of the a‹ackers. We are considering the problem of evaluating the lower and the upper boundaries on c, within which the L-construction algebraic geometric codes have the corresponding properties. In the case of codes on an arbitrary curve the lower bound for the c-TA property was obtained earlier; in this paper, the lower bound for the c-FP property was constructed. In the case of curves with one infinite point, the upper bounds for the value of c are obtained for both c-FP and c-TA properties. During our work, we have proved an auxiliary lemma and the proof contains an explicit way to build a coalition and a pirate identifying vector. Methods and principles presented in the lemma can be important for analyzing broadcast encryption schemes robustness. Also, the c-FP and c-TA boundaries monotonicity by subcodes are proved.

АЛГОРИТМ ДИНАМИЧЕСКОГО ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ЦИФРОВОГО ВОДЯНОГО ЗНАКА В ПАМЯТИ ПРОГРАММЫ

An algorithm for embedding digital watermarks into the memory of the executable program is proposed. Digital watermarks are used for copy protection and copyright confirmation of digital objects. The proposed approach makes it possible to form a digital watermark in the operative memory of an executable program for a limited period of time. The address of the embedded information in RAM is random, which greatly complicates its detection and identification. Extraction of digital watermark is performed by passphrase. The embedding, extraction and removal of a digital watermark is implemented using a dynamic library, which is an integral part of the user authentication process, which prevents third-party removal of the digital watermark.

Technical Fixes for Legal Uncertainty in the 1980s Software Cracking Scene

During the 1980s, many software developers and enthusiasts reacted to software's unclear status within the U.S. copyright law by pursuing technical, rather than legislative fixes. This paper applies forensic methods to recover records of conflict between commercial software developers and the enthusiasts who sought to “crack” commercial programs’ copy protection.

PbS Quantum Dots Based on Physically Unclonable Function for Ultra High-Density Key Generation

Secure data encryption depends on the one-way functions and copy protection relies on features that are hard to reproduce. Herein, we present the physically unclonable function (PUF) concept based on PbS quantum dots (QDS) for ultra high-density key generation. Compared with existing PUFs, the proposed QDs-based PUF may boost the key density by about an order of magnitude, and also has certain advantages in terms of uniqueness, randomness and spatial characteristics. The proposed PUF passes applicable National Institute of Standards and Technology randomness tests. The area/bit is 14.5 nm2 for PbS QDs-based PUF1, 54.76 nm2 for PbS QDs-based PUF2, respectively. Compared with optical PUF, it improves the key density about 9.6 times and 2.3 times, respectively. Further, PbS QDs-based PUF1 and PbS QDs-based PUF2 demonstrate the larger data spaces and the read data has better spatial characteristics and uniqueness. We anticipate the QDs-based PUF circuit would shed light on future research of circuit design and information security technology.

복제방지 칩을 이용한 임베디드 기반 보안 제어기

복제방지 칩을 이용한 임베디드 기반 보안 제어기

A novel video scene change detection using successive estimation of statistical measure and HiBiSLI method

Video data watermarking becomes very essential due to digital broadcasting. Scene change detection is the initial step, required for the digital video data copy protection. This paper presents novel scene change detection algorithm based on successive estimation of statistical measure [SESAME] and HiBiSLI algorithm. The designed system detects the scene change using, covariance difference between the measures of each frame is considered. Successive difference between the statistical measures of frames are used and the difference is compared with a pre-difference value. A new algorithm, a combination of histograms, binary search and linear interpolation [HiBiSLI] filtering algorithm is introduced to filter out similar frames at the initial stage. The filtering method uses calculated threshold value. Scene detection algorithm uses ffmpeg as reference to calculate different parameter values. The performance of the designed system is evaluated using precision, recall, F-measure values and computation time. The experimental result proves that the designed system is well good in terms of its computational time, low complexity and better parameter values.

Robust Scene-Based Digital Video Watermarking Scheme Using Level-3 DWT: Approach, Evaluation, and Experimentation

This paper presents a robust digital video-watermarking system for copyright and copy protection. The proposed method applies the combination of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and scene-change-detector. For better understanding, this approach can be presented in the form of four stages. The first stage is finding the frame where the watermark is to be inserted. The analysis of watermarking using the level-3 decomposition of LL subband with DWT is described in the second stage. Transparency and the robustness have been analyzed under fifteen different attacks in the third stage. Improvement in the robustness and transparency, as compare to watermarking using different levels of LL subband is calculated in terms of the normalized correlation and the structural similarity index in the fourth stage. The experimental result reveal that the proposed method yields the extracted watermark image and watermarked video of good quality and can sustain different image processing, JPEG compression and geometrical attacks. Empirical results prove the improvement in the performance as the decomposition level increases from level-1 to level-3. Comparative analysis with the existing schemes proves the improved robustness, better imperceptibility and the reduced computational time of the proposed scheme.

REVERSE ENGINEERING AND VULNERABILITY ANALYSIS IN CYBER SECURITY

Most of the incidents response environment and computer forensics investigations cannot be successful accurately or thoroughly without understanding the runtime nature of a binary. Hackers increasingly use customized Trojans that are not detected by any antivirus which can only be analyzed and traced back to the original attacker via reverse engineering. Sometime, many executable programs contain vulnerabilities, such as use of very weak cryptographic algorithms and the buffer overflows. The most useful way to discover these extreme critical vulnerabilities for binary closed-source programs is to reverse engineer them. Reverse engineering is required in order to understand and define complex binary obfuscation schemes used by copy protection vendors, as well as obfuscation put in place by commercial software vendors. In some different cases Vulnerability Analysis may be the ambition of the test to validate mitigation is in place and the vulnerability is not accessible; while in other mode the ambition maybe to test every applicable variable with authenticated access in an effort to discover all applicable vulnerabilities. Testing may be to find all the vulnerabilities on a hosting system; while in other factors we may need to find all the vulnerabilities on hosts within a given boundary or inventory. Vulnerability analysis performs according to the threat level of a system detected by the penetration testing.