Semi-fragile Watermarking Scheme Research Articles

Semi-fragile watermarking scheme based on perceptual hash function (PHF) for image tampering detection

The increasing performances of personal computers, as well as software of image processing, enable the easy manipulation of digital media content. Unfortunately, this easy manipulation makes the detection of changes in the multimedia content a very difficult task. Digital watermarking is among the most appropriate techniques to verify the integrity of multimedia content. In this paper, we propose a semi-fragile watermarking scheme for JPEG2000 image self-authentication that ensuring the robustness of the watermark against the compression attacks generated by the JPEG2000 encoder itself. The scheme is combined with the JPEG2000 encoder by embedding the generated watermark into the host image during the JPEG2000 compression process. To generate the watermark we suppose to use a perceptual hash function (PHF) operating on discrete wavelet coefficients of the host image. The proposed watermark generation process leads the system to verify the integrity of the image without the need to any file except for the watermarked image. The watermark is embedded during the JPEG2000 compression process after Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) step into the approximation sub-band coefficients of the five wavelet decomposition using Index Modulation Quantification (QIM), and can be extracted during image decoding. To prove the authentication of the image, the system compares the extracted watermark with the new watermark generated from the received image. Experimental results show that our proposed approach has not only an extremely high accuracy of tampering detection but also a relatively very high resistance against JPEG2000 compression attacks.

SEMI-FRAGILE WATERMARKING SCHEME FOR RELATIONAL DATABASE TAMPER DETECTION

Most of data over the Internet today is hosted on outsourced third-party servers which are not trusted. Sometimes data is to be distributed to other organizations or individuals for pre-agreed use. In both of these scenarios data is susceptible to malicious tampering so there is a need for some mechanism to verify database integrity. Moreover, the authentication process should be able to differentiate between valid updates and malicious modifications. In this paper, we present a novel semi-fragile watermarking scheme for relational database integrity verification. Besides detection and localization of database tampering, the proposed scheme allows modifications to the data that need periodic updates, without requiring re-watermarking. Watermark embedding is distortion free, as it is done by adjusting the text case of selected data values resulting in retention of semantic meaning of data. Additionally, group-based embedding ensures the localization of tampering up to group level. We implemented a proof of concept application of our watermarking technique. Theoretical analysis and experiments show that even a single value modification can be detected with very high probability besides detection of attacks like tuple insertion and tuple deletion.

Blind semi-fragile watermarking scheme for video authentication in video surveillance context

With the development of advanced multimedia editing tools, numerous unauthorized manipulations are easily doable to surveillance systems video files. Thus, video tamper detection is revealed as a big challenge for multimedia security field researchers. Indeed, we propose herein a singular value decomposition (SVD) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based semi fragile watermarking scheme for video content authentication. A content-based authentication signature is firstly generated by extracting reliable features from regions of interest. QR code generation technique as well as Arnold transform are used to boost the security aspect of the watermark. This latter is efficiently hidden in the wavelet middle frequency sub bands through an additive embedding algorithm and then extracted via a blind detection method. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme jointly achieves a good perceptual quality and a high watermark capacity. In addition, it is capable of distinguishing intentional attacks from incidental modifications. Indeed, the proposed watermarking scheme is very fragile to malicious tampering while allowing non-malicious processing.

Fragile watermarking for image authentication using BRINT and ELM

Privacy and security concerns regarding digital information have been increasing with advancements in multimedia and network technologies. Digital images are an integral component of online-distributed content, which plays a crucial role in forming public perceptions and opinions. They also play a major role in sensitive areas, such as law and defense. Any attempt to tamper with them is, therefore, a serious issue. One common approach to this problem is fragile image watermarking, which is used to ensure the authenticity of digital content. In this paper, a new fragile watermarking method for the authentication of digital images is proposed based on a binary rotation invariant and noise tolerant (BRINT) local texture descriptor and an extreme learning machine (ELM). BRINT is used to generate and retrieve the watermark in both the embedding and extraction procedures. In parallel, ELM is used in both procedures to learn and recover any tampered areas. The experimental results showed that the proposed scheme does not degrade image quality, allows for tamper detection, and has a recovery ability comparable with state-of-the-art fragile and semi-fragile watermarking schemes. Moreover, the proposed scheme has been validated as a fragile watermarking method with the potential to detect and locate modifications in digital images, such as copy-paste forgery, JPEG compression, and noise addition. This method is useful in sensitive fields, like defense, law, and journalism, in which decision-making based on digital visual information is necessary, to ensure that an image is authentic and has not been tampered with.

Semi Fragile Watermarking with Tamper Localization and Recovery using AMBTC Method

The watermarking scheme in digital media communication has become an essential tool in helping content creators prove ownership if any dispute arises in copyright infringement. In this paper, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) is performed in the watermarking process which improves the authentication of the image and the detection of the tampered region. The semi-fragile watermarking scheme provides robustness to the watermark during extraction process even after the unintentional compression attacks like JPEG compression. The watermark payload is significantly lowered in order to increase the quality of the image. The recovery is done using the absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) of the image in the untampered region. Thus, both the mean and first absolute moment are used in recovering the tampered regions in the watermarked image.

A watermarking scheme based on rotating vector for image content authentication

Semi-fragile watermarking technique for digital image, as a technology for content authentication, aims at telling malicious tampering from content-preserving operators. However, with the resolution of imaging sensors increasing and the explosive growth of digital images on the internet, before authorization, watermarked images tend to undergo such double-compression environments as: first compression (JPEG/JPEG2000) for release, decoding, application processing (conventional signal processing such as nosing, filtering, cropping, and scaling/security attack/malicious tampering), and second compression (JPEG2000/JPEG) for release again. In this paper, based on rotating vector, we propose a novel watermarking expression method that can describe carrier semantics to a certain extent and its modulation algorithm for digital image, and analyze the stability of the watermarked data theoretically. Then, a semi-fragile watermarking scheme is proposed for image content authentication to effectively distinguish malicious content manipulation from content-preserving operations in the double-compression application environment, which expands the application scope of content authentication based on watermarking technology.

A watermarking algorithm for image content authentication in double-compression environment

Malicious tampering of digital image content may lead to serious consequences. As image resolution increases and its circulations on the network grows rapidly, images undergo double compression in the following environment: compression (JPEG/JPEG2000) for first release, decoding, application processing (conventional signal processing/security attacks/malicious content tampering), and compression (JPEG2000/JPEG) for rerelease before detection. Effectively determining whether the image content has been tampered and to locate the tampering position in a double-compression environment is an urgent problem. In this paper, a novel watermark expression method based on rotating vector and its modulation algorithm is proposed. Based on this method, a semi-fragile watermarking scheme is established for the image content authentication. The stability of watermarked data is analyzed theoretically, providing the watermark scheme with a theoretical basis. The authentication schemes with feature extraction and reconstruction, watermark embedding and extraction, and tamper detection and localization are mainly elaborated. The robustness of watermark, its security, and related detection performance are analyzed. Theoretical analysis and experiments show that the scheme features a good watermark transparency, good robustness, and stable distribution for different attacks and can effectively distinguish malicious tampering from content-preserving operators and locate tampering area under double-compression environment. In addition, the proposed scheme can resist watermark attacks, collage attacks, and forge attacks. Compared with related schemes, the proposed scheme has superior comprehensive performance and is suitable for content authentication in double-compression environment, which expands the application scope of watermark-based content authentication.

Semi-fragile self-recovery watermarking scheme based on data representation through combination

The widely available multimedia editing tools and their large reconstruction capabilities make digital multimedia content more sensitive to malicious tampering and manipulations. Therefore, ensuring digital image integrity has become a crucial issue. Watermarking became a popular technique for image authentication. The goal of this paper is to propose a new semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication, localization, and recovery, by using two different watermarks jointly. The embedded information watermark for content recovery is computed from discrete wavelet transform (DWT) approximation coefficients of second level decomposition of the original image and compressed by using Data Representation through Combination (DRC) in order to reduce watermark payload. On another hand, authentication watermark used for both authentication and localization of image tampering is computed by using the block-based watermarking algorithm. Three pseudo-random maps are generated in order to improve the security of the proposed scheme against local attack. Both watermarks are embedded into approximation sub-band of the first wavelet decomposition. Experimental results show that our proposed approach has not only an extremely high accuracy of tampering localization but also a relatively very high recovery rate. Besides, the scheme is able to detect perfectly the difference between malicious attacks and non-malicious attacks such as JPEG compression.

An optimized hierarchical encryption technique for tamper recognition

Digital images contain sensitive information that needs to be watermarked for ownership authentication and copyright verification. It is crucial to have a method to detect and recognize tampering when images are sent over insecure channels. The watermarking scenario becomes more complicated when an intruder is precluded from obtaining a watermark signal from a watermarked image since it can expose future point-to-point correspondences. The proposed scheme utilizes a hierarchical strategy for improving the security of the semi-fragile watermarking scheme that requires fewer data to be exchanged before each transaction. Consequently, the proposed watermarking method obtains a trade-off between robustness and imperceptibility by using a meta-heuristic approach, namely, the Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA). Furthermore, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is built using the Softmax classifier to recognize possible attacks that might be performed by an intruder. The whole scheme is presented in the form of a GUI with the attack recognition triggered from the receiver’s side. Experimental results show improved image quality metrics like PSNR, correlation coefficient, and structural similarity when the scaling factor used in the watermarking algorithm is optimized using SCA.

An Adaptive Curvelet Based Semi-Fragile Watermarking Scheme for Effective and Intelligent Tampering Classification and Recovery of Digital Images

A novel adaptive semi-fragile watermarking scheme for tamper detection and recovery of digital images is proposed in this paper. This scheme involves embedding of content and chroma watermarks generated from the first level Discrete Curvelet Transform (DCLT) coarse coefficients. Embedding is performed by quantizing the first level coarse DCLT coefficients of the input image and amount of quantization is intelligently decided based on the energy contribution of the coefficients. During watermark extraction, a tampered matrix is generated by comparing the feature similarity index value between each block of extracted and generated watermarks. The tampered objects are subsequently identified and an intelligent report is formed based on their severity classes. The recovery of the tampered objects is performed using the generated DCLT coefficients from luminance and chrominance components of the watermarked image. Results reveal that the proposed method outperforms existing method in terms of tamper detection and recovery of digital images.

An Efficient Semi-fragile Watermarking Scheme for Tamper Localization and Recovery

To solve the problem that remote sensing images are vulnerable to be tampered, a semi-fragile watermarking scheme was proposed. Binary random matrix was used as the authentication watermark, which was embedded by quantizing the maximum absolute value of directional sub-bands coefficients. The average gray level of every non-overlapping 4×4 block was adopted as the recovery watermark, which was embedded in the least significant bit. Watermarking detection could be done directly without resorting to the original images. Experimental results showed our method was robust against rational distortions to a certain extent. At the same time, it was fragile to malicious manipulation, and realized accurate localization and approximate recovery of the tampered regions. Therefore, this scheme can protect the security of remote sensing image effectively.

An Improved Secure Semi-fragile Watermarking Based on LBP and Arnold Transform

In this paper, we analyze a recently proposed semi-fragile watermarking scheme based on local binary pattern (LBP) operators, and note that it has a fundamental flaw in the design. In this work, a binary watermark is embedded into image blocks by modifying the neighborhood pixels according to the LBP pattern. However, different image blocks might have the same LBP pattern, which can lead to false detection in watermark extraction process. In other words, one can modify the host image intentionally without affecting its watermark message. In addition, there is no encryption process before watermark embedding, which brings another potential security problem. To illustrate its weakness, two special copy-paste attacks are proposed in this paper, and several experiments are conducted to prove the effectiveness of these attacks. To solve these problems, an improved semi-fragile watermarking based on LBP operators is presented. In watermark embedding process, the central pixel value of each block is taken into account and Arnold transform is adopted to guarantee the security of watermark. Experimental results show that the improved watermarking scheme can overcome the above defects and locate the tampered region effectively.

A unified framework for authenticating topology integrity of 2D heterogeneous engineering CAD drawings

This paper presents a novel unified framework for authenticating topology integrity of 2D heterogeneous engineering CAD drawings. Topology information, through which a variety of engineering reports are generated, plays the most important role in the engineering CAD field. However, topology integrity authentication for engineering CAD drawings is still in its infancy and few efforts were made in the literature. By efficiently extracting topological and geometric features regardless of their heterogeneity with respect to geometrical shape and topology representation, the proposed framework supports verifying topology integrity for various heterogeneous engineering CAD drawings, such as process flow diagrams (PFD), piping and instrument drawings (P&ID), piping isometric drawings (ISO) as well as sectional drawings. Topology authentication is achieved through embedding local topological features into geometric features by introducing a generic and effective semi-fragile watermarking scheme. A novel descriptor, called topology local binary patterns (T-LBP), is proposed to extract local topological features of heterogeneous drawings. Theoretical analysis and experiments have demonstrated the discrimination power, robustness and sensitivity of the proposed T-LBP descriptor. We also carry out further experiments to prove that the proposed framework can not only detect and locate malicious topological modifications, but also yield strong robustness against various topology preserving modifications.

ParQuoSCI: Pseudorandom Partial Quotient Sequences for Content based Image Authentication

The application of a number theory based pseudorandom sequence called Partial Quotient (PQ) sequence generated from the continued fraction expansion of irrational numbers in a semi fragile watermarking scheme for content based image authentication is considered in this paper. The generated pseudorandom PQ sequence is used to create sub vectors to be used at various instances in the watermarking process. The watermark is derived from the image and is embedded in the higher textured blocks. The watermarked images demonstrate high imperceptibility and make it suitable for use in artistic, medical and military applications where high quality and minimal distortion of the watermarked images is required.

Low complexity semi-fragile watermarking scheme for H.264/AVC authentication

This paper presents a low complexity configurable semi-fragile watermarking scheme for content-based H.264/AVC authentication, which allows content-preserving manipulations such as video transcoding techniques, while it is very sensitive to content-changing and frame manipulations. A low cost spatial analysis is exploited to maximize robustness and lessen the incurred distortion. Invariant features are extracted from intra macroblocks, and frame index timing information constituting the content-based authentication codes are embedded/extracted into Quantized DCT (QDCT) coefficients in a Group of Pictures GOP-based fashion. The embedded watermark can be detected and verified by partially decoding intra and inter macroblocks without the prior knowledge of the original video or complete video decoding. Spatial and temporal tampering can be characterized and localized by comparing the extracted and re-generated feature-based watermarks. Experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed scheme is indeed superb in terms of bit-rate and perceptual quality. Moreover, various types of attacks have been simulated and characterized.

A singular-value-based semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image content authentication with tamper localization

This paper presents a singular-value-based semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image content authentication. The proposed scheme generates secure watermark by performing a logical operation on content-dependent watermark generated by a singular-value-based sequence and content-independent watermark generated by a private-key-based sequence. It next employs the adaptive quantization method to embed secure watermark in approximation subband of each 4×4 block to generate the watermarked image. The watermark extraction process then extracts watermark using the parity of quantization results from the probe image. The authentication process starts with regenerating secure watermark following the same process. It then constructs error maps to compute five authentication measures and performs a three-level process to authenticate image content and localize tampered areas. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed scheme outperforms five peer schemes and its two variant systems and is capable of identifying intentional tampering, incidental modification, and localizing tampered regions under mild to severe content-preserving modifications.

Semi-fragile Watermarking Scheme for H.264/AVC Video Content Authentication Based on Manifold Feature

Authentication of videos and images based on the content is becoming an important problem in information security. Unfortunately, previous studies lack the consideration of Kerckhoffss principle in order to achieve this (i.e., a cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge). In this paper, a solution to the problem of finding a relationship between a frame’s index and its content is proposed based on the creative utilization of a robust manifold feature. The proposed solution is based on a novel semi-fragile watermarking scheme for H.264/AVC video content authentication. At first, the input I-frame is partitioned for feature extraction and watermark embedding. This is followed by the temporal feature extraction using the Isometric Mapping algorithm. The frame index is included in the feature to produce the temporal watermark. In order to improve security, the spatial watermark will be encrypted together with the temporal watermark. Finally, the resultant watermark is embedded into the Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients in the diagonal positions. At the receiver side, after watermark extraction and decryption, temporal tampering is detected through a mismatch between the frame index extracted from the temporal watermark and the observed frame index. Next, the feature is regenerate through temporal feature regeneration, and compared with the extracted feature. It is judged through the comparison whether the extracted temporal watermark is similar to that of the original watermarked video. Additionally, for spatial authentication, the tampered areas are located via the comparison between extracted and regenerated spatial features. Experimental results show that the proposed method is sensitive to intentional malicious attacks and modifications, whereas it is robust to legitimate manipulations, such as certain level of lossy compression, channel noise, Gaussian filtering and brightness adjustment. Through a comparison between the extracted frame index and the current frame index, the temporal tempering is identified. With the proposed scheme, a solution to the Kerckhoffss principle problem is specified.

A region-adaptive semi-fragile dual watermarking scheme

Since existing watermarking schemes usually have only a single function, a region-adaptive semi-fragile dual watermarking scheme is proposed, taking into account both watermark embedding capacity a...

Semi-fragile watermarking for grayscale image authentication and tamper detection based on an adjusted expanded-bit multiscale quantization-based technique

In this work, a semi-fragile watermarking scheme, for grayscale image authentication and tamper detection, is proposed. The proposed watermarking scheme is based on implementing a modified DWT quantization-based algorithm by embedding a random watermark bit sequence into the DWT domain using an expanded-bit multiscale quantization-based technique with adjusted watermarked location. Here, the watermark bit is expanded into three similar bits and embedded in a multiscale fashion into the DWT low-frequency subbands of the 2nd DWT levels (LL2, LLHL1 and LLLH1). An adjustment of the quantized coefficients is provided based on modifying their values to fall in more secure locations within the quantization interval. Several designed criteria were used to judge the received image by classifying it into: authenticated, incidentally or maliciously attacked with high accuracy in detecting and classifying attacks. Experimental results have shown the suitability of the proposed approach for tamper detection and accurate authentication.

A semi-fragile watermarking scheme for authenticating audio signal based on dual-tree complex wavelet transform and discrete cosine transform

In this paper, a novel semi-fragile watermarking scheme for authenticating an audio signal based on dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) is proposed. Specifically, the watermark data are efficiently inserted into the coefficients of the low-frequency sub-band of DT-CWT taking advantages of both DCT and quantization index modulation (QIM). First, the original digital audio signal is segmented and then performed with DT-CWT. Second, based on the energy compression property, the low-frequency sub-band coefficients of the DT-CWT domain are performed with DCT, and the DC component is utilized to embed one distorted watermark bit by the QIM technique. Finally, inverse DCT and DT-CWT are orderly implemented on the watermarked coefficients of each audio segment to get a watermarked audio signal. Simulation results show that the hybrid embedding domain constructed by DT-CWT and DCT is effective, and the proposed watermarking scheme is not only inaudible, but also robust against content persistent non-malicious audio signal processing operations, such as MP3 compression, noise addition, re-sampling, re-quantization, etc. Furthermore, the proposed scheme can effectively authenticate the veracity and integrity of audio content and greatly expands the applicability of the audio watermarking scheme.