Watermark Generation Research Articles

A novel semi fragile watermarking technique for tamper detection and recovery using IWT and DCT

A novel semi fragile watermarking technique using integer wavelet transform (IWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) for tamper detection and recovery to enhance enterprise multimedia security is proposed. In this paper, two types of watermark are generated which are namely the authentication watermark and recovery Watermark. The Watermarked Image is formed by embedding the authentication watermark which is generated using the proposed IWT based authentication watermark generating Technique. Next, the watermarked image is divided into 2 × 2 blocks and a 10 bit recovery watermark is generated from each of the 2 × 2 blocks using the proposed DCT based recovery watermark generation technique. The generated recovery watermark is used to form the recovery tag which is sent along with the watermarked image to the receiver. At the receiver side, the proposed tamper detection technique is used for verifying the authenticity and identifying the attacks in the watermarked image. If the manipulations are identified as malicious, then the tampered parts in the received image are recovered using the proposed tamper recovery technique. The performance of the proposed tamper detection and recovery technique was tested for different types of incidental/content preserving manipulations and various types of malicious attacks. When compared to the existing semi fragile watermarking techniques, the proposed embedding technique produced a better PSNR (Peak Signal to noise ratio) for various watermarked images. Also, the proposed tamper detection and recovery technique were able to localize the malicious attacks and subsequently recover the tampered parts when compared to the existing techniques. The increased performance of the proposed tamper detection and recovery technique was due to the usage of both Normalized Hamming Similarity (NHS) and tamper detection map in the proposed tamper detection technique to identify manipulations and due to the generation of both the authentication and recovery watermark.

A Semi-Fragile Reversible Watermarking for Authenticating 2D Engineering Graphics Based on Improved Region Nesting

To achieve high tampering localization precision and low distortion, a semi-fragile reversible watermarking for authenticating 2D engineering graphics is proposed based on an improved region nesting and a novel watermark generation. First, an intensive investigation is performed to the recently proposed region nesting (RN) partition. It is found that the original vertex and its mapped one cannot be guaranteed to be on the same line, which means that it still has room for improvement in term of distortion. Based on this, an improved region nesting partition (IRN) is proposed. Secondly, inspiring by the idea of soldiers parading, a novel watermark generation based on the short hash of the adjacent geometric features is developed. Then, a new coordinate system is constructed to achieve invariability of translation, scaling, rotation and entity re-arrangement. Based on the above techniques, a semi-fragile reversible watermarking for authenticating 2D engineering graphics is put forward. Experimental results and analysis show that IRN can obtain at least 15% distortion reduction compared with RN, the precision of tampering localization can be improved to a single vertex, and a certain semi-fragility in translation, scaling, rotation, and entity re-arrangement can be achieved. Furthermore, it has no file size expansion, and can obtain a good balance among imperceptibility, semi-fragility and tampering localization precision.

Cover dependent watermarking against ambiguity attacks

Abstract Digital Image Watermarking using Singular Value Decomposition has a fundamental flaw of false watermark generation when Singular Values of the watermark are embedded into the cover. The proposed work embeds Principal Components of two watermarks instead, to overcome this flaw. These watermarks are embedded into horizontal and vertical sub-band coefficients of 3-level DWT of the cover respectively. Keys based on cover and watermarks are generated and used for cover and watermark verification during extraction. The proposed technique is secure because knowing the keys merely is not sufficient to extract the two watermarks. Correct combination of keys with the respective 3-level DWT coefficients is required. The work is proved to be robust against false watermark generation, false cover claim and general image processing attacks together with high imperceptibility. Colour images are used in HSV colour model and Value plane is used for embedding the watermark.

Enhancing fragility of zero-based text watermarking utilizing effective characters list

Text is an important medium used for sharing information worldwide. For a text document, digital watermarking is an efficient way for copyright protection, authentication, tamper proofing, to name but a few. In this paper, a zero-based watermarking approach is proposed for document authentication and tamper detection. To enhance the fragility of watermark, the proposed text watermarking approach can be comfortably utilized – based on the Effective Characters List (ECL) for watermark generation. The ECL method is generated for English text zero-watermarking by maintaining the contents of the original document and constructing the watermark by formulating the smooth transition between the selected characters in the documents. The evaluation of the proposed watermarking approach is based on three famous watermarking attacks including deletion, insertion, and reordering with an accuracy of 80.76%, 80.36%, and 88.1%, respectively. For a fair evaluation, a comparison is put forth with a recent zero-based watermarking method - clearly showing that the proposed method outperforms existing with greater accuracy.

Biological Viral Infection Watermarking Architecture of MPEG/H.264/AVC/HEVC

This paper addresses the viral infectious watermarking (VIW) model using biological virus infection for a new-paradigm of video copyright protection of MPEG/H.264/AVC/HEVC. Our model aims to spread or infect the watermark to different codecs each time video contents are copied, edited, or transcoded. Thus, we regard the watermark as the infectious virus, the video content as the host, and the video codec as the contagion medium and then model pathogen, mutant, and contagion as the infectious watermark. Then, we define the techniques of viral infectious watermark generation, kernel-based VIW, and content-based VIW. Furthermore, we present a reversible VIW for fast infection in VIW model. This makes the video quality and strength be adaptively controlled in the infectious process. Experiment results verified that our VIW model can detect or recover the reversible watermark without loss in different codecs and also can maintain the quality of video content that is recovered to the same bit rate.

Energy efficient clustering and secure routing using reinforcement learning for three‐dimensional mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) comprises a set of wireless nodes that provide communication benefits for users without any access points or centralised control. Owing to the highly dynamic wireless nature, MANET has many challenges such as limited energy, packet loss, and security. Therefore, a special energy efficient and secure routing protocol is of great importance in MANETs. In this study, three-dimensional (3D) MANET is considered where mobile nodes are distributed and moved within 3D space. The energy consumption (EC) and throughput increases in the 3D environment compared to 2D. Initially, cell clustering is performed by node residual energy, distance, and mobility in which a cumulative fitness value is computed using the firefly algorithm (firefly with cyclic randomisation algorithm). Then introduced a novel routing scheme referred to as two-hop relay selection by multi-metric based reinforcement learning algorithm. Multi-metric considered for routing is the following: node delay, node distance, node stability, node mobility, and node degree. Before transmission, data packets are encrypted based on the robust cipher watermarking scheme (watermark generation, embedding, and extraction). An extensive simulation is conducted using NS3.26 under a 3D environment in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, routing packet overhead, EC, and security strength.

Block-based fuzzy-image authentication method

Fragile watermarking methods have been widely used for image authentication. A novel image-authentication method based on fuzzy coding is presented in this work. This method is a block-based method and it consists of watermark generation, watermark embedding, watermark extraction, tamper detection, and image recovery phases. First, the cover image is divided into nonoverlapping blocks. In the watermark-generation step, fuzzy sets and fuzzy coding are used. To generate fuzzy sets, three threshold points are selected from a histogram of the cover image and fuzzy sets are created by using these threshold points. Memberships of pixels are calculated to generate features. Fuzzy coding is used to generate the watermark. The watermark-embedding function uses ±1 data hiding function for each block. Therefore, high visual quality is achieved. The generated watermark is compared with the extracted watermark in the tamper-detection phase. Finally, a new image-recovery algorithm is proposed for recovering tampered areas. To evaluate the proposed method, visual quality, tamper detection ability, image recovery capability, and computational complexity were used. The experimental results clearly indicated that the proposed method was a success.

A Novel Robust Reversible Watermarking Scheme for Protecting Authenticity and Integrity of Medical Images

It is of great importance in telemedicine to protect authenticity and integrity of medical images. They are mainly addressed by two technologies, which are region of interest (ROI) lossless watermarking and reversible watermarking. However, the former causes biases on diagnosis by distorting region of none interest (RONI) and introduces security risks by segmenting image spatially for watermark embedding. The latter fails to provide reliable recovery function for the tampered areas when protecting image integrity. To address these issues, a novel robust reversible watermarking scheme is proposed in this paper. In our scheme, a reversible watermarking method is designed based on recursive dither modulation (RDM) to avoid biases on diagnosis. In addition, RDM is combined with Slantlet transform and singular value decomposition to provide a reliable solution for protecting image authenticity. Moreover, ROI and RONI are divided for watermark generation to design an effective recovery function under limited embedding capacity. Finally, watermarks are embedded into whole medical images to avoid the risks caused by segmenting image spatially. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed lossless scheme not only has remarkable imperceptibility and sufficient robustness, but also provides reliable authentication, tamper detection, localization and recovery functions, which outperforms existing schemes for protecting medical images

Secure and robust watermarking algorithm for remote sensing images based on compressive sensing

The aim of this paper is to improve the reconstruction accuracy and security when adopting Compressive Sensing (CS) in watermarking algorithm. Unlike classical CS-based watermark generation method, lifting wavelet transformation, partial Hadamard matrix, and ternary watermark sequence have been combined together to carry sufficient watermark information to ensure reconstruction accuracy and robustness. In the procedure of watermark embedding and extraction, watermark is embedded and extracted in CS measurement of remote sensing image. Hence the whole algorithm security is guaranteed by CS measurement matrix either in watermark generation or watermark embedding and extraction. Then, the CS-based watermarking algorithm for remote sensing images is proposed and demonstrated. Compared with other CS-based approaches, the improvements on reconstruction accuracy, security and robustness of the proposed algorithm have been verified by experiments.

A novel CNN based security guaranteed image watermarking generation scenario for smart city applications

The rise of machine learning increases the current computing capabilities and paves the way to novel disruptive applications. In the current era of big data, the application of image retrieval technology for large-scale data is a popular research area. To ensure the robustness and security of digital image watermarking, we propose a novel algorithm using synergetic neural networks. The algorithm first processes a meaningful gray watermark image, then embeds it as a watermark signal into the block Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) component. The companion algorithm for detection and extraction of the watermark uses a cooperative neural network, where the suspected watermark signal is used as the input while the output consists in the result of the recognition process. The simulation experiments show that the algorithm can complete certain image processing operations with improved performance, not only simultaneously completing watermark detection and extraction, but also efficiently determining the watermark attribution. Compared with other state-of-the-art models, the proposed model obtains an optimal Peak Signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR).

A probabilistic image authentication method based on chaos

Fragile watermarking methods have been used as active image authentication methods. These methods must have capabilities like high capacity, high visual quality, high image authentication ability and image recovery capability. Many of the fragile watermarking methods suggested in the literature do not provide all of these capabilities. In this article, a new probabilistic image authentication method with high capacity, high visual quality, high image authenticity ability and image recovery capability is proposed. Chaotic pseudo random number generators, a new watermark generation network which similar to neural network, modulo based watermark embedding functions, modulo based watermark extraction functions, tamper detection algorithm and perceptual hash based image recovery algorithm are utilized for creating a new probabilistic image authentication method in this article. The proposed method is a block based authentication method and 3 × 3 size of overlapping neighborhood blocks are used in this method. The proposed watermark generation network uses symmetric pixels as inputs and weights to generate predicted pixel. In this step, modulo operator and random numbers are used for calculating embeddable value. Owing to chaotic random number generator, the proposed method gains probabilistic and nonlinear structure. To generate random number, logistic map is used as random number generator in the proposed image watermarking method. Then, a modulo based watermark embedding function is used for embedding embeddable value (generated watermark). In the watermark extraction step, modulo operator is used. If the predicted value differs from the extracted value, tamper detection is performed. Otherwise, image authentication is success. A new image recovery algorithm is proposed in this method. This algorithm provides image recovery for tampered areas with high visual quality. The proposed image watermarking method can authenticate grayscale and color images. The experimental results demonstrated that, the proposed method has high payload capacity, high visual quality and high image authentication ability.

Robust watermarking scheme using Weber Law for 3D mesh models

ABSTRACTAuthentication and identification of multimedia objects play an important aspect for multimedia security. In this we present a semi-blind watermarking scheme for 3D mesh models using Weber’s law. A robust and imperceptible spectral watermarking for high rate embedding of a watermark into 3D polygonal meshes is analyzed in this paper. The proposed approach consists of these main steps (i) mesh is portioned into smaller sub-meshes, (ii) generation of watermark from the original model, (iii) watermark embedding and extraction to each sub-meshes. Extensive experimental results show an improved performance of the proposed system and also its robustness against the most common attacks including the geometric transformations, adaptive random noise, mesh smoothening, mesh cropping and combination of these attacks.

Speech authentication and content recovery scheme for security communication and storage

With the rapid development of Internet, it brings a lot of conveniences. However, the data transmission and storage are faced with some security issues that seem to be obstacles to overcome, such as privacy protection and integrity authentication. In this paper, an efficient speech watermarking algorithm is proposed for content authentication and recovery in encrypted domain. The proposed system consists of speech encryption, watermark generation and embedding, content authentication and recovery. In the encryption process, chaotic and block cipher are combined to eliminate the positional correlation and conceal the statistical feature. In the watermark embedding process, approximation coefficients of integer wavelet transform are used to generate watermark and the detail coefficients are reserved to carry watermark. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed scheme has high security and excellent inaudibility. Compared with previous works, the proposed scheme has strong ability to detect de-synchronization attacks and locate the corresponding tampered area without using synchronization codes. Meanwhile, the selective encryption will not influence the selective watermarking operation. Similarly, the operation of watermarking will not affect the decryption of the encrypted speech. Additionally, the tampered samples can be recovered without any auxiliary watermark information.

Detection and Isolation of Replay Attacks through Sensor Watermarking

This paper addresses the detection and isolation of replay attacks on sensor measurements. As opposed to previously proposed additive watermarking, we propose a multiplicative watermarking scheme, where each sensor’s output is separately watermarked by being fed to a SISO watermark generator. Additionally, a set of equalizing filters is placed at the controller’s side, which reconstructs the original output signals from the received watermarked data. We show that the proposed scheme has several advantages over existing approaches: it has no detrimental effects on the closed-loop performance in the absence of attacks; it can be designed in a modular fashion, independently of the design of the controller and anomaly detector; it facilitates the detection of replay attacks and the isolation of the time at which the replayed data was recorded. These properties are discussed in detail and the results are illustrated through a numerical example.

Robust Digital Text Watermarking Algorithm based on Unicode Extended Characters

Objectives: A new text watermarking algorithm is proposed in this paper to protect documents from malicious attacks.Methods: In this paper, a novel digital text watermarking algorithm is developed based on Unicode extended characters. The algorithm is implemented to encompass watermark generation, embedding and extraction components. Predefined encoding tables are constructed to achieve the embedding while scrambling mechanism is proposed in generation and extraction to secure the watermarks. Findings: To evaluate the algorithm, it was tested, using ten different text samples, under various attacks such as conversion, reformatting, copying, insertions and deletions. The proposed algorithm has attained high level of imperceptibility with PSNR between 63.15 and 70.88 and SIM between 99.93% and 99.97%.Evaluating the robustness of the algorithm proved that it resists most of the attacks with high detection accuracy reached 100% in most cases. It has also achieved improved capacity with 2 bits/word and increased security level compared to the previous works. Application/Improvements: The proposed algorithm has added a new value to the information security field and can be used for documents protection from various malicious aspects.

A High Security Buyer-Seller Watermark Protocol based on Iris Biometric

With the development of digital watermarking technology, digital watermarking protocol is now drawing the attention for protecting copyrights of digital products. However, the copyright protection is fully protected by watermark technology if it is employed a suitable protocol between the rights owner and the customer. Therefore, currently, there are a number of buyer-seller watermarking protocols proposed, however, an anonymous problem and collusion problem are still unsolved completely. Thus, this paper proposes a high security watermark protocol based on iris biometric for resolving these problems. In addition, this paper also produces watermarking generation mechanism which aims to improve the efficiency of the whole mechanism. Finally, the investigation indicates that the proposed buyer-seller watermark protocol takes care of the security concerns of all parties involved, and the proposed scheme could also find an illegal copy of the content, the violators can be traced back.

Object coding based video authentication for privacy protection in immersive communication

Video immersive communication has become a new trend in human-interaction technologies by the information exchanging, which requires the object based coding to provide very low bit rate compression for transmission as well as to protect the privacy of the users. In addition, advanced content-based functionalities in ambient intelligence such as encoder/decoder selection and manipulation of specific objects in a video stream also need the support from object based coding. Unfortunately, due to a malicious entity of modification/replacement/removement of the individual foreground objects and background in the video, effective video authenticity protection is still challenging in some realistic cases. In this paper, we propose an object based coding authentication strategy based on a Chinese remainder theorem for video authenticity protection during transmission. With the watermark generation for single frame and content scalable video coding, we performed the proposed authenticity verification on both original video and sub-video. Based on the efficiency evaluation on video transmission, the proposed approach ensures an applicable authenticity between the foreground objects and their associated background for video immersive applications.

Copyright Protection Service for Mobile Images

This paper presents a watermarking protocol that is used for protecting any digital image and working as a copyright registration for any important image to any user who feels his/her image is important. The registration by this server is applied only once for any input image by keeping the date and the time of the registration with secure authentication process. The authentication process combines both the encryption and the digital signature to generate the invisible watermark that will be added to the image and only the visible watermark will be shown on the lower/right corner of the client image. The proposed protocol has three stages represented by watermark generation, watermark embedding and verification. For the first stage, three steps should be followed to generate a watermark. In the first step, the phone number with international code is encrypted using SHA-1, in the second step, the result of the first step and a watermark text are encrypted using SHA-1 hash function again and the third step encrypts the result of the second step using RSA algorithm. For the second stage of the protocol discrete wavelet transform algorithm is used for watermark embedding. And for the third stage a matching is done between the retrieval watermarks with the decrypted one. As a result both concepts of integrity and authenticity can be obtained from the proposed protocol, because hash function using SHA-1 is still secure just time so the system is guaranteed to the two parties: the cover originality, safe transmission with full integrity, and full authenticity.

Generating optimal informed and adaptive watermark image based on zero-suppressed binary decision diagrams for medical images

Watermarking protects legitimate copies of digital multimedia, such as video, audio and images, from unauthorized use. Digital watermarks are used to verify the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of data to prove the identity of its owners. Watermark generation is one of the most important aspects of watermarking schemes, and should aim to produce as small a watermark as possible a low quantity of data to be embedded in the multimedia to reduce the complexity of computational processes. Although embedding a large amount of watermark data in almost any medium increases the chances of recovering it, this also increases the complexity, which can become impractical for real time applications. In this paper, we focus on the robustness of medical image watermarks and present a means to generate a small watermark. This idea is very innovative in the watermarking field. The proposed approach is based on Zero-Suppressed Binary Decision Diagrams ZBDD. ZBDD has proven its effectiveness in many fields, such as data mining, big data processing, computer networks, etc. Application of ZBDD to medical image watermarking will help us to take into account not only the complexity and the capacity factors but also the watermark robustness. The results obtained are very significant and encouraging and will be examined in this paper under several attack scenarios.

Video Authentication and Copyright Protection using Unique Watermark Generation Technique and Singular Value Decomposition

Digital watermark is perceptually invisible information embedded in the video. This embedding is done by an encoder using a secret key. The watermark can carry information about owner or recipient of the video or the video itself or some additional information like video caption, date etc. The watermarked video may undergo possible changes by unauthorized users or attackers. Unintentional and malicious attacks are aimed to disable watermark detection. Watermark embedding algorithm should be robust to such attacks. Watermark detection algorithm should decide whether watermark is present or absent in the video. If original video is used to make this decision, detector’s efficiency is increased and this system is termed as non-blind or private or non-oblivious watermarking system. Non-Blind watermarking is very expensive in terms of storage and not a practical solution. Blind or public watermarking algorithms not require original video for watermark detection. These algorithms are more practical but detector’s efficiency is low compared to one in private watermarking. In order to increase security of blind watermarking scheme it is desirable to use video dependent keys in the process of watermark generation. In this paper we discussed various video watermarking generation techniques and their challenges and used it for Video authentication. Experimental results show that same watermark can be used for authentication as well as copyright protection. General Terms Digital Watermarking, Video watermarking