Watermarking System Research Articles

A watermarking technique to improve the security level in face recognition systems

This paper presents a proposal for a suitable and viable combination of a face recognition system and a watermarking system, namely a PCA—DCT combination, as a new watermarked face recognition scheme that will ensure the authenticity of the data being transmitted in the face recognition system, which will then increase its level of security. The emphasis is on recognizing and rejecting stolen biometric data reintroduced into the system. The research begins with an analysis of biometric systems, with an emphasis on face recognition systems, and in particular with reference to the recorded threats on such systems, Biometric watermarking algorithms proposed by previous researchers within the face recognition environment are then studied, noting their proposed solutions to the said threats. This would then give a good idea towards a watermarked face recognition scheme to be proposed to enhance the security of face recognition systems, especially in terms of the authenticity of the data being transmitted. This watermarked face recognition scheme is the main objective, which will be then worked into the PCA—DCT combination, followed by a check on all the 8 possible locations where data may be intercepted and/or reintroduced. All the results produced are positive, apart from a few situations that will have to be left for future work. Non degradation of the individual PCA and DCT systems due to the combination is also checked and experimented on, again with positive results. Finally, the robustness of the watermarked face recognition scheme is experimented on to evaluate its resilience against attacks.

Framework for robust blind image watermarking based on classification of attacks

With the widespread internet usage, digital contents are easily distributed throughout the world. To eliminate concerns of producers and owners of digital contents, watermarking techniques are extensively being used. Robustness against intentional and unintentional attacks is a major quality of watermarking systems. Since different attacks tend to target different parts of the frequency spectrum, in this paper we propose a framework for blind watermarking which determines the type of attack that the image has gone through before extracting the watermark. Within this framework, we propose an attack classification method to identify the region of the frequency spectrum that is less damaged. The watermark which is redundantly spread throughout the spectrum can be extracted from the less damaged regions. Experimental results show functionality of the framework by producing better results in comparison with well-known blind watermarking techniques.

A multimodal biometric watermarking system for digital images in redundant discrete wavelet transform

The traditional watermarking algorithms prove the rightful ownership via embedding of independent watermarks like copyright logos, random noise sequences, text etc into the cover images. Coupling biometrics with watermarking evolved as new and secure approach as it embeds user specific biometric traits and thus, narrows down the vulnerability to impostor attacks. A multimodal biometric watermarking system has been proposed in this paper in the redundant discrete wavelet transform(RDWT). Two biometric traits of the user i.e. the iris and facial features are embedded independently into the sub-bands of the RDWT of cover image taking advantage of its translation invariant property and sufficient embedding capacity. The ownership verification accuracy of the proposed system is tested based on the individual biometric traits as well as the fused trait. The accuracy was enhanced while using the fused score for evaluation. The security of the scheme is strengthened with usage of non-linear chaotic maps, randomization via Hessenberg decomposition, Arnold scrambling and multiple secret keys. The robustness of the scheme has been tested against various attacks and the verification accuracy evaluated based on false acceptance rate, false rejection rate, area under curve and equal error rate to validate the efficacy of the proposed scheme.

Security analysis and improvement of an active watermarking system for image tampering detection using a self-recovery scheme

This paper analyses the security of an effective SVD-based image tampering detection and self-recovery scheme that has been recently proposed by S. Dadkhah et al. Some errors in the embedding/extraction processes are underlined and an attack against this scheme is demonstrated. The theoretical and experimental results show that the proposed scheme is not secure. Finally, an improvement of the scheme is proposed to enhance its security.

Visual perception based robust watermarking with integral imaging

This paper presents a robust watermarking approach for hiding gray watermark into digital images. Conventional transform-based watermarking schemes provide only one transform plane for watermark embedding, which makes easy to remove embedded watermark information. Cellular automata transform (CAT) based watermarking scheme can address this problem with CA properties. In this paper, the watermark is first recorded in the form of an elemental image array (EIA) with the computational integral imaging (CII) system, and then the recorded EIA is embedded into the CAT coefficient. The watermark embedding coefficient will be determined by an alpha map which generated by saliency map. This proposed method can provide a more robust watermarking system because EIA is composed of many elemental images and each image has its own property of the watermark. Even though most data of elemental images are lost, the watermark can be reconstructed successfully by using the remaining elemental images. Furthermore, the alpha map which is generated by saliency map can make watermark more invisible for the human visual system. Some experimental results show competence of our system.

Analysis of Current FPGA-Based Image Watermarking Attempts

Objective: Analysing of current FPGA-based image watermarking attempts to figure out the future requirements for such systems. Analysis: Hardware-based watermarking systems have been studied according to their performance in time, frequency and robustness measurements. A comparison has been made among current systems in terms of robustness, image quality achieved and system performance. Findings: Image watermarking was a very demand area of research in last decades, but hardware based attempts of image watermarking are still few in compare with software implementations although many modern systems nowadays rely on hardware-based real time algorithms. For their flexibility and reprogrammable nature, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) where adopted by many researchers for implementing watermarking hardware algorithms in cases where the need of high speed computations is a critical requirement. We find that many current watermarking schemes need to combine the required watermarking features as image quality measurements, using real size images, adaptable designs, and using FPGA features in using parallel high performance systems.

A Secure and Robust Image Watermarking System Using Normalization and Arnold Scrambling

This article proposes an image watermarking scheme to improve the robustness and security of watermark against several attacks. To achieve this, image normalization is utilized where affine transformation is applied on the image and which makes it as invariant to geometric trans- formations. The Lifting Wavelet Transform (LWT) and block based Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is applied to the cover image after normalizing an image. Then, the DC coefficients from all blocks are gathered and singular value matrix is constructed using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The watermark image is embedded in this singular value matrix after scrambling the image, which increases the security of the proposed scheme. The robustness and invisibleness of the proposed scheme is measured using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Signal to noise Ratio (SNR) and Structural Similarity (SSIM). The comparison was made with existing schemes and it reveals that the proposed scheme provides high robustness than the existing one.

An adaptive HVS based video watermarking scheme for multiple watermarks using BAM neural networks and fuzzy inference system

An efficient reversible adaptive video watermarking scheme for multiple watermarks based on Bi-directional Associative Memory (BAM) Neural Networks and Fuzzy Inference System namely, Multi-BAM-FUZ scheme is proposed in this paper. The main goal of this paper is to design a robust video watermarking system which facilitates secure video transmission over a communication channel by maintaining a trade-off among imperceptibility, robustness and watermark capacity or payload. The BAM neural network supports creation of weight matrix (formed out of multiple images) and this matrix is embedded into the DWT uncorrelated mid frequency coefficients of all the components (Y, Cb, Cr) of every frames of the video with varying embedding strength ‘α’. This adaptive embedding strength is generated using the Fuzzy Inference System which takes HVS characteristics such as luminance, texture and edge of each frame as an input in the DWT transform. The simulations performed on various test videos demonstrate that the proposed Multi-BAM-FUZ not only outperforms other existing methods with respect to various video degradation processes, but also maintains a satisfactory image quality, robustness and payload. It is noted that, the implementation of the novel adaptive process enhances the visual quality of about 60.97dB in terms of PSNR and 0.9998 in terms of SSIM, robustness of about nearly 1.0000 and 0.9999 in terms of Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) value and Bit Correction Rate (BCR) respectively against various attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme facilitates high level of payload without affecting the imperceptibility and robustness level.

English

English

A security watermark scheme used for digital speech forensics

Based on digital watermark, a speech forensics scheme is proposed. The feature coefficients cross-correlation degree of speech signal is defined, and the property is discussed, which demonstrates that the feature is very robust. Then a new watermark embedding method based on the feature is explored, aiming to enlarge the embedding capacity and solve the security issue of watermark schemes based on public features. In this paper, for each fame of speech signal, it is cut into two parts, and each part is divided into some segments. Then frame number is mapped to a sequence of integers, which are embedded into the segments. The integers can be extracted used for forensics and tamper location after watermarked signal being attacked. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the scheme proposed is inaudible and robust against desynchronization attacks, enhances the security of watermark system and has a good ability for speech forensics.

Three-Dimensional Video Watermarking – A Review and Open Challenges

Intellectual property (IP) protection of three-dimensional (3-D) media is an important issue for both academic and wider communities to combat the illegal distribution and pirating of this visual medium. Digital watermarking has been used to address various challenges in media IP protection. The challenge central to 3-D video as well as other audio-visual signal watermarking is that given a fixed level of perceptual transparency, a watermarking system cannot simultaneously achieve a high degree of robustness and a high watermark payload. The majority of published research reports in this field try to introduce new embedding methodologies to increase the watermark robustness with highest possible visual media quality. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art in 3-D video watermarking and assesses various watermarking techniques in the field. Some of 3-D video watermarking techniques are directly inherited from video watermarking, stereo image watermarking or 3-D mesh watermarking, and therefore the relevant techniques in these fields are reviewed in this paper as well. Key performances of various embedding algorithms are examined and compared in this review to identify a benchmark for future development and performance evaluation of new 3-D video watermarking techniques.

Survey on Robust and Reversible Watermarking for Relational Data

In the course of recent years, reversible watermarking systems for social databases have been proposed to give assurance of possession rights, information treating, and information trustworthiness. Every now and again, these strategies make certain fashioned information recuperation from knowledge of the watermarks, though irreversible watermarking plans best safeguard possession rights. At the point when possession rights are upheld utilizing watermarking, the basic information experiences specific alteration; as a consequence of which, the information quality gets traded off. Reversible watermarking is utilized to guarantee information quality alongside information recuperation. Nevertheless, such approaches are in general now not strong towards malicious assaults and what's more, don't supply any component to specifically watermark a one of a kind quality by means of considering its position in capacities disclosure.

DWT/RDWT/SVD에 기반한 특이벡터를 사용한 블라인드 워터마킹 방안

우리는 컨텐츠 복제방지를 위하여 기존의 SVD와 DWT/RDWT를 결합한 워터마킹 시스템에 특이벡터를 추가로 사용하는 방안을 제안하였다. 우리는 SVD를 사용하는 워터마킹 시스템에 존재하는 오류긍정문제(false-positive problem)를 극복하기 위하여 기존의 SVD기반 알고리즘과 같이 특이값에 워트마크를 임베딩할 뿐만 아니라, 커버이미지의 첫 번째 좌/우 특이벡터를 워터마크 이미지의 첫번째 좌/우 특이벡터와 교체하였다. 제안 방안은 오류긍정문제 (false-positive problem)가 발생하지 않는 워터마킹 시스템을 구현할 수 있었으며, 기존의 오류긍정문제가 없는 시스템과 비교하여 우수한 충실성과 강인성을 보여 주었을 뿐만 아니라, 오류긍정문제가 발생하는 시스템에 비해서도 크게 성능차이가 나지 않음을 보여 주었다. We proposed a blind watermarking scheme using singular vectors based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Redundant Discrete Wavelet Transform (RDWT) combined with Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) for copyright protection application. We replaced the 1st left and right singular vectors decomposed from cover image with the corresponding ones from watermark image to overcome the false-positive problem in current watermark systems using SVD. The proposed scheme realized the watermarking system without a false positive problem, and shows high fidelity and robustness.

State-of-the-Art in Techniques of Text Digital Watermarking: Challenges and Limitations

Data protection from malicious attacks and misuse has become a crucial issue. Various types of data, including images, videos, audio and text documents, have given cause for the development of different methods for their protection. Cryptography, digital signatures and steganography are the most well known technologies used to protect data. During the last decade, digital watermarking technology has also been utilized as an alternative to prevent media forgery and tampering or falsification to ensure both copyright and authentication. Much work has been done to protect images, videos and audio but only a few algorithms have been considered for text document protection with digital watermarking. However, our survey observed that available text watermarking algorithms are neither robust nor imperceptible and as such remain unsecured methods of protection. Hence, research to improve the performance of text watermarking algorithms is required. This paper reviews current watermarking algorithms for text documents and categorizes text watermarking methods based on the way the text was treated during the watermarking process. It also discusses merits and demerits of available methods as well as recent proposed methods for evaluating text watermarking systems and the need for further research on digital text watermarking.

A Perceptually-Adaptive High-Capacity Color Image Watermarking System

A Perceptually-Adaptive High-Capacity Color Image Watermarking System

A unified model for information hiding systems

The paper presents a new model for a unified description of information hiding systems including both steganographic and watermarking systems. The model is based on considering three possible representations of the information being embedded: a binary vector, a digital signal, and a feature matrix. Some examples of the model usage are discussed.

Digital tags from multi-subject biometric features for joint ownership of digital data

This paper addresses the issue of joint ownership of digital images and audio signals by embedding a perceptually transparent digital signature. The pattern is generated using an approach so that the authentication of each constituent subject can be done after decomposition of the digital pattern. The features from these iris images from multiple subjects are strategically combined to generate a biometric watermark of an acceptable size under perceptual transparency constraints. This biometric watermark is embedded in SVD domain for audio signal and using a DCT-based method for digital images. The extracted watermark is decomposed into the respective iris templates for distinct identification in the database. Experimental result shows that proposed watermarking system maintains the challenging design requirements of watermarking system. Biometric watermark generated from biometric features of more than one subject is a novel effort for establishing joint ownership of multimedia data and may be considered as a significant contribution.

Multiple audio watermarking system based on CDMA

Multiple watermarking is the technique that permits to embed multiple data into the same media content. In this paper, a new multiple audio watermarking system is discussed. Our main objective is to increase the capacity of watermark information, under the inaudibility constraint, while maintaining a high degree of robustness against several disturbances. At the emitter, code division multiple access (CDMA) is used to embed multiple watermarks in the time domain of the host signal. At the receiver, we consider the detection process as a matter of blind source separation (BSS) between the audio signal and the embedded data. Two BSS techniques have been tested in the new multi-watermarking system: under-determined independent subspace analysis (UISA) and Gaussian mixture models (GMM). Experimental results exhibit that inaudibility and high robustness of hidden data can be achieved simultaneously with a substantial increase of the amount of watermark information (to a multiplicative factor of 4).

A Proposed Multi Images Visible Watermarking Technique

Visible watermarking techniques are proposed to secure digital data against unauthorized attacks. These techniques protect data from illegal access and use. In this work, a multi visible watermarking technique that allows embedding different types of markers into different types of background images has been proposed It also allows adding multiple markers on the same background image with different sizes, positions and opacity levels without any interference. The proposed technique improves the flexibility issues of visible watermarking and helps in increasing the security levels. A visible watermarking system is designed to implement the proposed technique. The system facilitates single and multiple watermarking as illustrated in the proposed technique. Experimental results indicate that the proposed technique applies visible watermarking successfully.

Does Optoelectronic Watermark Technology Migrate Into Business and Industry in the Near Future?Applications of Optoelectronic Watermarking Technology to New Business and Industry Systems Utilizing Flat-Panel Displays and Smart Devices

Proposed are new applications of image displays to invisible optoelectronic watermarking systems whose technique will be effectively used in business and industry. The system is basically characterized by paired installer and viewer of new kind to transfer hidden invisible auxiliary data on watermark code patterns. A flat-panel image display enabled us to demonstrate invisible data hidden behind the watermark codes embedded into object image data by use of the installer. Smartphones placed against the flat-panel displays enabled us to establish an optical link between them in a variation of the prototype for taking out of the watermark codes by use of the viewer. Therefore, each smartphone could be also used to resume original auxiliary data on the small display attached to the viewer. This kind of optoelectronic system was established with the aid of a smartphone. It was experimentally confirmed to be applied to business and industry by transferring alphanumeric characters stably.