Secure Watermarking Algorithm Research Articles

Implementation of Robust and Secure Watermarking Algorithm on FPGA using DCT

Digital watermarking deals with embedding digital content in a cover signal so that it becomes indiscernible to make it robust against different security threats. This work demonstrates the implementation of a robust and secure watermarking technique on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Block by block DCT of the cover image was computed and watermark pixels in each of the blocks were hidden using middle-frequency band coefficients. Security is ensured by encrypting the watermarkwith a secret key and Arnold transform. The resultant watermark image is robust to various threats like JPEG compression, scaling, cropping, and noise attacks. This watermarking approach requires a large amount of data to be processed at high speed. FPGA is the best choice for such an application. Also, it is reprogrammable and easily upgradable according to user application. In this work, a watermarking algorithm is implemented using Xilinx design tools on the Artix-7 FPGA board.

A robust and secure watermarking algorithm based on DWT and SVD in the fractional order fourier transform domain

The present paper aims to develop and validate a robust and secure watermarking algorithm. Firstly, the algorithm transforms the cover image and the watermark image separately by FRFT to obtain the amplitudes of both the cover image and watermark image, and then the two-level DWT transformation only carries out for the amplitude of the cover image. Secondly, the algorithm applies the SVD to the low-frequency sub-band of the second level DWT of the cover image and the amplitude of the watermark image. Thirdly, a new matrix is constructed based on the singular values from both the cover and watermark images to embed watermark information. Lastly, the algorithm takes the preliminary numerical calculation to determine an appropriate transformation order of FRFT for the cover image and to provide an outstanding balance between the imperceptibility and robustness in the proposed watermarking scheme. Moreover, it guarantees the security of watermarking scheme by the transformation order of FRFT. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme provides better performance in imperceptibility and resistance against traditional signal processing and geometric attacks, especially in image rotation, image cropping, average filtering, median filtering, and Gaussian filtering in comparison with the existing methods in the literature.

WatMIF: Multimodal Medical Image Fusion-Based Watermarking for Telehealth Applications.

Over recent years, the volume of big data has drastically increased for medical applications. Such data are shared by cloud providers for storage and further processing. Medical images contain sensitive information, and these images are shared with healthcare workers, patients, and, in some scenarios, researchers for diagnostic and study purposes. However, the security of these images in the transfer process is extremely important, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes a secure watermarking algorithm, termed WatMIF, based on multimodal medical image fusion. The proposed algorithm consists of three major parts: the encryption of the host media, the fusion of multimodal medical images, and the embedding and extraction of the fused mark. We encrypt the host media with a key-based encryption scheme. Then, a nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT)-based fusion scheme is employed to fuse the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scan images to generate the fused mark image. Furthermore, the encrypted host media conceals the fused watermark using redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and randomised singular value decomposition (RSVD). Finally, denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN) is used to improve the robustness of the WatMIF algorithm. The simulation experiments on two standard datasets were used to evaluate the algorithm in terms of invisibility, robustness, and security. When compared with the existing algorithms, the robustness is improved by 20.14%. Overall, the implementation of proposed watermarking for hiding fused marks and efficient encryption improved the identity verification, invisibility, robustness and security criteria in our WatMIF algorithm.

A Robust and Secure Watermarking Algorithm Based on Dwt and Svd in the Fractional Order Fourier Transform Domain

A Robust and Secure Watermarking Algorithm Based on Dwt and Svd in the Fractional Order Fourier Transform Domain

A Robust and Secure Watermarking Algorithm Based on Dwt and Svd in the Fractional Order Fourier Transform Domain

A Robust and Secure Watermarking Algorithm Based on Dwt and Svd in the Fractional Order Fourier Transform Domain

Cloud based secure watermarking using IWT-Schur-RSVD with fuzzy inference system for smart healthcare applications

The healthcare records include personal and sensitive information about the patient. These records are easily distributed via different platform for clinical diagnosis purpose. Presently, large volumes of medical data are stored on cloud platform. However, outsourcing medical data to these popular platforms may introduce security issues. Thus, a secure watermarking algorithm based on integer wavelet transform (IWT)-Schur-Randomized Singular Value Decomposition (RSVD) is put forward for medical records sharing in the cloud environment. To ensure high level of authentication, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based embedding is conducted to achieve dual watermarking by concealing system MAC address in the logo image. Prior to this, the system address is encoded via turbo code to reduce /eliminate the channel noise, if any. Further, both invisibility and robustness are achieved by fuzzy inference system (FIS), and the marked image is encrypted using chaotic encryption scheme to further improve the security. Furthermore, experimental results is reported and compared with the existing works which demonstrated promising outcomes, indicating its potential towards realization of a value-added tool for smart healthcare applications.

Selective encryption and optimization based watermarking for robust transmission of landslide images

In this paper, a secure watermarking algorithm is proposed to efficiently enhance invisibility and robustness simultaneously. First, the combination of transform domain scheme is used to identify the appropriate coefficient for data embedding. To offer a good balance between robustness and invisibility, we computed optimal embedding factors by using the fusion of particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and the Firefly algorithm. Subsequently, the watermark is scrambled by using a step space-filling curve, and the scrambled watermark is embedded into the wavelet domain of the cover image via the optimal embedding factor. Furthermore, selective encryption is applied to the original host image so that the proposed algorithm can also provide an additional level of security at low cost. We achieved average scores of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), normalised coefficient (NC), number of changing pixel rate (NPCR) and unified averaged changed intensity (UACI) as 55.1471 dB, 0.9956, 0.9801 and 0.3471, respectively.

Secure Watermarking Algorithm based on DNA Sequence Using DWT-SVD

Secure Watermarking Algorithm based on DNA Sequence Using DWT-SVD

Hologram authentication based on a secure watermarking algorithm using cellular automata

A secure watermarking algorithm for hologram authentication is presented in this paper. The algorithm exploits the noise-like feature of holograms to randomly embed a watermark in the domain of the discrete cosine transform with marginal degradation in transparency. The pseudo random number (PRN) generators based on a cellular automata algorithm with asymmetrical and nonlocal connections are used for the random hiding. Each client has its own unique PRN generators for enhancing the watermark security. In the proposed algorithm, watermarks are also randomly generated to eliminate the requirements of prestoring watermarks in the clients and servers. An authentication scheme is then proposed for the algorithm with random watermark generation and hiding.

An ID-based digital watermarking protocol for copyright protection

Digital watermarking techniques are a means of protecting the copyrights of digital contents. In this paper, we propose an identity-based (ID-based) digital watermarking protocol and point out several previously unpublished flaws in Hwang et al. (2005)’s scheme. We hope that by identifying the design flaws, similar structural mistakes can be avoided in future designs. We also claim that our proposed digital watermarking scheme can effectively solve the problem of multiple claims of ownership, and is suitable for any practical and secure watermarking algorithm.