Fragile Watermarking Research Articles

Image Fragile Watermarking through Quaternion Linear Transform in Secret Space

In this paper, we apply the quaternion framework for color images to a fragile watermarking algorithm with the objective of multimedia integrity protection (Quaternion Karhunen-Loève Transform Fragile Watermarking (QKLT-FW)). The use of quaternions to represent pixels allows to consider the color information in a holistic and integrated fashion. We stress out that, by taking advantage of the host image quaternion representation, we extract complex features that are able to improve the embedding and verification of fragile watermarks. The algorithm, based on the Quaternion Karhunen-Loève Transform (QKLT), embeds a binary watermark into some QKLT coefficients representing a host image in a secret frequency space: the QKLT basis images are computed from a secret color image used as a symmetric key. A computational intelligence technique (i.e., genetic algorithm) is employed to modify the host image pixels in such a way that the watermark is contained in the protected image. The sensitivity to image modifications is then tested, showing very good performance.

Self-embedding fragile watermarking scheme to restoration of a tampered image using AMBTC

The problem of digital forgeries has become more and more serious in various fields like entertainment, digital forensics, and journalism. This paper proposes a self-embedding watermarking scheme f...

Steganalysis via a convolutional neural network using large convolution filters for embedding process with same stego key: A deep learning approach for telemedicine

Summary Introduction Steganography, the art to hide information inside host media like pictures and movies, and steganalysis, its countermeasure attempting to detect the presence of an hidden information within an innocent-looking document, are frequently reported as promising information security techniques for telemedicine. For the past few years, in the race between image steganography and steganalysis, deep learning has emerged as a very promising alternative to steganalyzer approaches based on rich image models combined with ensemble classifiers. A key knowledge of image steganalyzer, which combines relevant image features and innovative classification procedures, can be deduced by a deep learning approach called convolutional neural networks (CNN). This kind of deep learning networks is so well-suited for classification tasks based on the detection of variations in 2D shapes that it is the state-of-the-art in many image recognition problems. Materials and methods We design a CNN-based steganalyzer for images obtained by applying steganography with a unique embedding key. The proposed CNN has a quite different shape compared to the ones resulting from the earlier works, and it is able to provide high detection accuracy for several steganographics tools when the same stego key is reused during the embedding process. The convolutional part of our proposal starts by a global filtering, using a single filter, followed by a second convolutional layer that produces a reduced set of high-level features (256 features for 512 × 512 pixels input images) thanks to the use of large filters. Results The proposed architecture embeds less convolutions, with much larger filters in the final convolutional layer, and is more general: it is able to deal with larger images and lower payloads. For the “same embedding key” scenario, our proposal outperforms all other steganalyzers, in particular the existing CNN-based ones, and defeats many state-of-the-art image steganography schemes. The information encoded by the final vector of features is so discriminating that the classifier part can be reduced to only two output neurons. We finally evaluated the detection ability of the CNN against two spatial domain steganographic schemes and a frequency domain one. More precisely, we designed a perfect steganalyzer for embedding payloads of 0.4 bit per pixel, and for all the steganographic tools investigated in this article (working either in spatial or in frequency domains). Rather interesting results have been obtained too, albeit to a lesser extent, for a payload value of 0.1 bpp. Discussion and conclusions The obtained results are very encouraging, and they outperform all the previous deep learning proposals for steganalysis. A first step in the design of a universal detector has been achieved too, as we are able to detect HUGO based hidden messages even when a WOW steganographier has been used during the training stage. These results allow us to propose to add fragile watermarks on media like pictures or pdf medical documents, to guarantee the authenticity of the material: any attempt of modification of the support will alter the watermark, proving by doing so the modification. Another application is to add personal and medical information inside medical images.

A Fragile Watermarking Scheme for Authentication of GIF Images

A Fragile Watermarking Scheme for Authentication of GIF Images

Real-time image tamper localization based on fragile watermarking and Faber-Schauder wavelet

This paper presents a real-time image tamper detection and localization based on fragile watermarking and Faber-Schauder discrete wavelet transform (FSDWT). The maximum coefficients of FSDWT are used with a logo to generate the watermark which is embedded in the least significant bit (LSB) of specified pixels of the original image. Experimental results prove the effectiveness of the proposed method through a series of attacks and affirm that the requirements of imperceptibility, fidelity, effectiveness and real-time processing are satisfied. The proposed method contains simple operations and has low complexity, hence, it is suitable for applications working on real-time.

Multipurpose watermarking scheme via intelligent method and chaotic map

In this paper, we propose a novel multipurpose intelligent image watermarking scheme for both content authentication and copyright protection. To achieve this, we first utilize integer discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) for watermark insertion and detection. The low frequency component of IDWT is used to insert a robust watermark (e.g., the copyright information) for copyright protection, whereas the high frequency component of IDWT is used to embed a fragile watermark (e.g., the logo data) for content authentication. To achieve a good tradeoff among the watermark conflicting requirements (e.g., robustness, fidelity and capacity), we develop an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm for optimal parameter selection. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves promising performance in both copyright protection and content authentication simultaneously, which confirm the superiority of our proposed algorithm as compared to existing methods.

LBP-based Fragile Watermarking for Blind Tamper Detection in Images

In recent years, with the development of the image processing technology, the protection to the authenticity and integrity of digital images has always been a topic of great concern. A blind image authentication technology with high tamper detection accuracy under different common attacks is urgently needed. In this paper, an improved fragile watermarking based on local binary pattern (LBP) for blind tamper detection in images is proposed. In this method, the binary watermark is generated by LBP operator, which is often used in texture analysis and pattern recognition. In order to improve the security of the proposed method, Arnold transform and logistic map are used to scramble the watermark. Then the watermark is inserted into the least significant bit (LSB) of original pixels. Since the watermark is constructed from the image itself, no original image is needed in tamper detection. The LBP map of watermarked image is compared with the extracted watermark to determine whether it is tampered or not. Compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms, experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves good performance in tamper detection and localization under various attacks.

A Logistic Map-Based Fragile Watermarking Scheme of Digital Images with Tamper Detection

Integrity protection is one of the security mechanisms used to prevent the originality of the content from illegal manipulation. In this paper, the authors have proposed an efficient fragile watermarking scheme to localize the temper region in digital images. To ensure the image integrity, the watermark information insertion is realized into the cover image using a key matrix. A logistic map-based chaotic sequence is considered to produce both the key matrix and the watermark information. The proposed scheme is able to retain high visual quality watermarked image and can precisely detect the tampered region if the image undergoes any attack by various malicious tampering methods. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is presented by performing various malicious tampering attacks on the watermarked images. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking scheme has achieved the satisfactory performance. The proposed scheme gives better perceptual quality of watermarked image and low false tamper detection rates compared to some other related schemes.

CONTENT PRESERVING WATERMARKING FOR MEDICAL IMAGES USING SHEARLET TRANSFORM AND SVD

Abstract. Medical Image Watermarking (MIW) is a special field of a watermarking due to the requirements of the Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine (DICOM) standard since 1993. All 20 parts of the DICOM standard are revised periodically. The main idea of the MIW is to embed various types of information including the doctor’s digital signature, fragile watermark, electronic patient record, and main watermark in a view of region of interest for the doctor into the host medical image. These four types of information are represented in different forms; some of them are encrypted according to the DICOM requirements. However, all types of information ought to be resulted into the generalized binary stream for embedding. The generalized binary stream may have a huge volume. Therefore, not all watermarking methods can be applied successfully. Recently, the digital shearlet transform had been introduced as a rigorous mathematical framework for the geometric representation of multi-dimensional data. Some modifications of the shearlet transform, particularly the non-subsampled shearlet transform, can be associated to a multi-resolution analysis that provides a fully shift-invariant, multi-scale, and multi-directional expansion. During experiments, a quality of the extracted watermarks under the JPEG compression and typical internet attacks was estimated using several metrics, including the peak signal to noise ratio, structural similarity index measure, and bit error rate.

Fragile image watermarking with pixel-wise recovery based on overlapping embedding strategy

In this paper, we propose a new fragile watermarking scheme with high-quality recovery capability based on overlapping embedding strategy. The block-wise mechanism for tampering localization and the pixel-wise mechanism for content recovery are collaborated in the proposed scheme. With the assist of interleaving operation, reference bits are derived from mean value of each overlapping block, and then are dispersedly embedded into 1 LSB or 2 LSB layers of the image, corresponding to horizontal-vertical mode and diagonal mode, respectively. Authentication bits are hidden into adaptive LSB layers of the central pixel for each block according to block complexity. On the receiver side, after locating tampered blocks and reconstructing mean-value bits, according to the types of tampered pixels in each overlapping block, three pixel-wise manners are exploited for tampering recovery based on different neighboring blocks. Even if the tampered area is extensive, the proposed scheme can achieve better quality of recovered image compared with some of state-of-the-art schemes.

Multipurpose watermarking for vector map protection and authentication

The rapid flourishing of GIS applications has made the copyright protection and content authentication of vector maps two important issues in the digital world. In this paper, a multipurpose watermarking scheme is proposed for the scenarios when the two requirements are needed simultaneously. In the scheme, robust watermark and fragile watermarks are embedded into the host map simultaneously. To avoid the interference between the two kinds of watermarks, robust watermark is embedded into the feature points of the objects in the map, while fragile watermarks are embedded into the nonfeature points. Due to the independence of the feature points and non-feature points, the robust watermark and fragile watermarks can be detected independently. After watermark detection, the robust watermark can be used for copyright protection, and the fragile watermarks can be used for tamper localization and characterization. The fragility of the proposed scheme is analyzed theoretically, and both the robustness and the fragility are verified by a set comprehensive experiments.

Fragile watermarking schemes for image authentication: a survey

This paper presents a survey of fragile watermarking schemes for image authentication proposed in the past decade. The limited embedding capacity and extent of tampering are some of the important issues among other issues that drive the research in this area. Therefore we have presented in this survey the gist of the fragile watermarking schemes in just enough detail so that the reader may gain a fair idea of the issues, techniques adopted in general to address them and the comparison of results. The general frame work of the fragile watermarking system, different categories of attacks and parameters used to evaluate the schemes are presented in this survey. The comparative analysis and the quantitative comparison of basic schemes and their variations with improvements will help the researchers in quick review of the recent developments in this area.

Fragile Watermarking for Image Authentication Using the Characteristic of SVD

Digital image authentication has become a hot topic in the last few years. In this paper, a pixel-based fragile watermarking method is presented for image tamper identification and localization. By analyzing the left and right singular matrices of SVD, it is found that the matrix product between the first column of the left singular matrix and the transposition of the first column in the right singular matrix is closely related to the image texture features. Based on this characteristic, a binary watermark consisting of image texture information is generated and inserted into the least significant bit (LSB) of the original host image. To improve the security of the presented algorithm, the Arnold transform is applied twice in the watermark embedding process. Experimental results indicate that the proposed watermarking algorithm has high security and perceptual invisibility. Moreover, it can detect and locate the tampered region effectively for various malicious attacks.

An adjustable-purpose image watermarking technique by particle swarm optimization

Imperceptibility, security, capacity, and robustness are among many aspects of image watermarking design. An ideal watermarking system should embed a large amount of information perfectly securely, but with no visible degradation to the host image. Many researchers have geared efforts towards developing specific techniques for variant applications. In this paper, we propose an adjustable-purpose, reversible and fragile watermarking scheme for image watermarking by particle swarm optimization (PSO). In general, given any host image and watermark, our scheme can provide an optimal watermarking solution. First, the content of a host image is analyzed to extract significant regions of interest (ROIs) automatically. The remaining regions of non-interest (RONIs) are collated for embedding watermarks by different amounts of bits determined by PSO to achieve optimal watermarking. The parameters can be adjusted relying upon user’s watermarking purposes. Experimental results show that the proposed technique has accomplished higher capacity and higher PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio) watermarking.

Hiding clinical information in medical images: A new high capacity and reversible data hiding technique

A new high capacity and reversible data hiding scheme for e-healthcare applications has been presented in this paper. Pixel to Block (PTB) conversion technique has been used as an effective and computationally efficient alternative to interpolation for the cover image generation to ensure reversibility of medical images. A fragile watermark and Block Checksum (computed for each 4×4 block) have been embedded in the cover image for facilitating tamper detection and tamper localization, and hence content authentication at receiver. The EPR, watermark data and checksum data has been embedded using Intermediate Significant Bit Substitution (ISBS) to avoid commonly used LSB removal/replacement attack. Non-linear dynamics of chaos have been put to use for encrypting the Electronic Patient Record (EPR)/clinical data and watermark data for improving the security of data embedded. The scheme has been evaluated for perceptual imperceptibility and tamper detection capability by subjecting it to various image processing and geometric attacks. Experimental results reveal that the proposed system besides being completely reversible is capable of providing high quality watermarked images for fairly high payload. Further, it has been observed that the proposed technique is able to detect and localise the tamper. A comparison of the observed results with that of some state-of-art schemes show that our scheme performs better.

ROI-based fragile watermarking for medical image tamper detection

In this paper, we propose a region of interest (ROI) based fragile watermarking scheme for medical image tamper detection. The proposed methodology is inspired by network transmission where the transmitted message is divided into packets and redundant information is added to treat errors. In fact, the cyclic redundancy check code (CRC) is one of the most crucial error detecting checking tools used in various digital communication systems. Consequently, the region of interest to be protected is considered as a message to be transmitted without errors. Thus, the CRC code is based on a standard polynomial generator CRC-32 with more particular mathematical properties and is performed on each packet to generate a watermark to be inserted in spatial domain. At the reception end, the watermark is extracted to detect errors. Results of experiments show the validity of the proposed approach in terms of imperceptibility and efficiency to detect reliable and strong attacks.

Fragile Watermarking Based on LBP for Blind Tamper Detection in Images

Nowadays, with the development of signal processing technique, the protection to the integrity and authenticity of images has become a topic of great concern. A blind image authentication technology with high tamper detection accuracy for different common attacks is urgently needed. In this paper, an improved fragile watermarking method based on local binary pattern (LBP) is presented for blind tamper location in images. In this method, a binary watermark is generated by LBP operator which is often utilized in face identification and texture analysis. In order to guarantee the safety of the proposed algorithm, Arnold transform and logistic map are used to scramble the authentication watermark. Then, the least significant bits (LSBs) of original pixels are substituted by the encrypted watermark. Since the authentication data is constructed from the image itself, no original image is needed in tamper detection. The LBP map of watermarked image is compared to the extracted authentication data to determine whether it is tampered or not. In comparison with other state-of-the-art schemes, various experiments prove that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance in forgery detection and location for baleful attacks.

A New Digital Watermarking Method for Data Integrity Protection in the Perception Layer of IoT

Since its introduction, IoT (Internet of Things) has enjoyed vigorous support from governments and research institutions around the world, and remarkable achievements have been obtained. The perception layer of IoT plays an important role as a link between the IoT and the real world; the security has become a bottleneck restricting the further development of IoT. The perception layer is a self-organizing network system consisting of various resource-constrained sensor nodes through wireless communication. Accordingly, the costly encryption mechanism cannot be applied to the perception layer. In this paper, a novel lightweight data integrity protection scheme based on fragile watermark is proposed to solve the contradiction between the security and restricted resource of perception layer. To improve the security, we design a position random watermark (PRW) strategy to calculate the embedding position by temporal dynamics of sensing data. The digital watermark is generated by one-way hash function SHA-1 before embedding to the dynamic computed position. In this way, the security vulnerabilities introduced by fixed embedding position can not only be solved effectively, but also achieve zero disturbance to the data. The security analysis and simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively ensure the integrity of the data at low cost.

Reversible Watermarking for Enhancing the Security and Storage of ECG Signal and EPR in DICOM Images

Hospital information system and picture archiving and communication system allow transfer of medical images via internet for sharing studies, getting second opinion from radiologist and physician etc. Storage and transmission of Medical Images is crucial as huge volumes are generated every day. Security of medical images is of greater concern for its role in clinical diagnostics. Digital image watermarking is a proven technique that addresses the security and storage issues concerned. The objective is to improve the storage of medical data by applying a reversible watermarking technique. This work presents a semi fragile watermarking technique which hides Electronic patient record and Electrocardiogram Signal (ECG) in the medical image. Embedding is done in discrete wavelet domain followed by singular value decomposition. Recursive dither modulation is used to embed the watermark consisting of EPR, ECG signal, Hash of Region of interest (ROI), vertices of ROI and Doctor Identification code (DIC). Security is provided by encrypting the watermark using Advanced Encryption Standard before embedding. Performance of the scheme is evaluated on DICOM images in different modalities using Peak Signal to noise ratio (PSNR), Mean Structural Similarity Index (MSSIM) and Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC). PSNR and MSSIM values obtained are above 57dB and 0.98 for the proposed technique. NCC value of 0.98 is obtained showing the robustness of the watermark. Thus the proposed work presents a technique for storing EPR and ECG signal in medical image offering better visual quality and security when compared to other techniques of this type.

An efficient reversible watermarking method and its application in public key fragile watermarking

An efficient reversible watermarking method and its application in public key fragile watermarking