Conference Paper

Robust data hiding for images

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Abstract

This paper describes a robust data embedding scheme, which uses a source and channel coding framework for data hiding. The data to be embedded, referred to as the signature data, is source coded by vector quantization and the indices obtained in the process are embedded in the wavelet transform coefficients of the host image. Transform coefficients of the host are grouped into vectors and perturbed using error-correcting codes derived from BCH codes. Compared to prior work in digital watermarking, the proposed scheme can handle a significantly large quantity of data such as a gray scale image. A trade-off between the quantity of hidden data and the quality of the watermarked image is achieved by varying the number of quantization levels for the signature, the codeword length, and the scale factor for embedding. Experimental results on signature recovery from JPEG compressed watermarked images are included

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... It is well known that embedding in the low frequency bands is more robust to manipulations. However, changes made to the low frequency component may result in visible artifacls (Abdulaziz and Pang 2000). Modifring the data in a multiresolution framework, such as a wavel:t transforrn appears quite promising for obtaining quality embedding with little perceptual distortio.r. ...
Article
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This paper describes a stego system in which a gray scale image is embedded in another one.Wavelet transform of both the cover image and the embedded image is used to sort their subbands energies to guarantee that the embedded image will be inserted in the low frequency components of the cover image with little perceptual distortion. Embedding by this way increases the robustness of the system but affects the syster 1 imperceptibility, so a variable scaling factor (a) is used to attenuate the components of the embedded image before adding them to those of the cover image. It is found that the stego image with peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of about 30 dB has goo 1 imperceptibility.The attacker is proposed to be active, so compression is applied to the stego image. According to this, the scaling factor must be increased to compromise between the quality of the stego and the reconstructed images. This increment reduces the imperceptibility of the stego image and here the trade off between the imperceptibility and the robustness occurs.The attack is proposed to be stego known, so that to increase the security of the system, a stego key is generated from the embedded image itself and is transmitted separately, making the system type secret key steganography.The size of the embedded image obtained in the work is one quarter the size of the cover image that may be considered good comparing with the available systems.
... Methods in the frequency domain include the discrete cosine transform (DCT) [20], Fourier transform (FT) [21], and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [22][23][24][25]. JPEG compression applies DCT to transform image sub-blocks, data can be encoded into the corresponding coefficients. ...
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... As we know, Steganography in DWT (discrete wavelet transform), those who are reading generally instructed to keep an eye on some examples which are there already in the literature. [50] [51] [52].Abdulaziz and Pang [53] is of the view that when the quantization vector is used it is said to be LBG (Linde Buzo Gray) which is paired along the block codes commonly called BCH code and 1-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms. It is also established fact that data transformation with wavelet transform saves some better quality along with the perceptual aretfacts. ...
Article
For hiding information in a digitalized object Steganography is an important technique. It is a special kind of scientific technique which involves the secret information communication inside suitable cover objects of multimedia like image files, audio or videos. The embedded data and its existence are hidden with the help of Steganography. It is a method of hiding data which has enormously improved the security level of confidential data with the help of special hiding mechanism and is considered as remarkable achievement in the computational power. The main aims of Steganography are; capacity of concealed data along with its robustness, lack of detection etc. These are some of the additional features which make it distinguishing from other older techniques like watermarking as well as cryptography. In this research paper, we have surveyed Steganography of digital images and cover the basic and key concepts. In spatial representation the development of image Steganographic methodology in the format of JPEG, along with that we will also debate on the modern developments as far as Steganography is concerned.For increasing Steganographic security, specifically used approaches are shortlisted and the developments made after investigations are also presented in this paper.
... In the project described in [33], researchers use vector quantization, called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG), associated with block codes, known as BCH codes, and one-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms. They emphasize that modifying data by using a wavelet transformation produces good quality with few perceptual artifacts. ...
Article
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Steganography is one of the methods used for the hidden exchange of information. It is the art and science of invisible communication, which strives to hide the existence of the communicated message. In this way, if successfully it is achieved, the message does not attract attention from eavesdroppers and attackers. Using steganography, information can be hidden in different embedding mediums, known as carriers. These carriers can be images, audio files, video files, and text files. The focus in this paper is on the use of an image file as a carrier, and hence, the taxonomy of current steganographic techniques for image files has been presented. These techniques are analyzed and discussed in terms of their ability to hide information in image files, the amount of the information that can be hidden, and the robustness to different image processing attacks.
... It is well known that steganography in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), the reader is advised to see few examples in the available literature in DWT [50] [51] [52]. Abdulaziz and Pang [53] stated that use vector quantization called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) coupled with block codes known as BCH code and 1-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms. They acknowledged that transforming data using a wavelet transformation conserves good quality with little perceptual artefacts. ...
... In this domain various algorithms are Li and Wang steganography [5], McKeon 2DdiscreteFourier transform (DFT) based steganography [44], Jsteg for jpeg images [6,7], OutGuess [8], -F5''algorithm [9]. Besides some DWT based techniques like W.Y.Chen, Color image steganography scheme using set partitioning in hierarchical trees coding [11], Abdulaziz and Pang technique based upon vector quantization called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG)coupled with block codes known as BCH code and 1-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms [12] are certain wavelet based steganography techniques. The DWT-based embedding technique is still in its infancy. ...
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Steganography is the science that deals with hiding of secret data in some carrier media which may be image, audio, formatted text or video. The main idea behind this is to conceal the very existence of data. We will be dealing here with image steganography. Many algorithms have been proposed for this purpose in spatial & frequency domain. But in almost all the algorithms it has been noticed that as we embed the secret data in the image the certain characteristics or statistics of the image get disturbed. Based on these disturbed statistics steganalysts can get the reflection about the existence of secret data which they further decode with the help of available steganalytic tools. Steganalysis is a science of attacking the hidden data to get an authorized access. Although steganalysis is not a part of this work but it may be sometimes discussed as a part of literature. Even in steganography we are not purely concerned with spatial or frequency domain rather our main emphasis is on adaptive steganography or model based steganography. Adaptive steganography is not entirely a new branch of steganography rather it is based upon spatial & frequency domain with an additional layer of mathematical model. So here we will be dealing with adaptive steganography which take care about the important characteristics & statistics of the cover image well in advance to the embedding of secret data so that the disturbance of image statistics as mentioned earlier, which attracts the forgery or unauthorized access, can be minimized. In this survey we will analyze the various steganography algorithms which are based upon certain mathematical model or in other words algorithms which come under the category of model based steganography.
... In [11,12], the authors presented a steganography technique which is based on wavelet compression. In [13], the authors used Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) vector quantization, associated with block codes, and one-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms to produce good quality steganography images with little perceptual distortions. In [14], the authors used artificial neural networks technology for steganography. ...
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... As for steganography in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), the reader is directed to some examples in the literature525354. Abdulaziz and Pang [55] use vector quantization called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) coupled with block codes known as BCH code and 1-stage discrete Haar wavelet transforms. They reaffirm that modifying data using a wavelet transformation preserves good quality with little perceptual artefacts. ...
Article
Steganography is the science that involves communicating secret data in an appropriate multimedia carrier, e.g., image, audio, and video files. It comes under the assumption that if the feature is visible, the point of attack is evident, thus the goal here is always to conceal the very existence of the embedded data. Steganography has various useful applications. However, like any other science it can be used for ill intentions. It has been propelled to the forefront of current security techniques by the remarkable growth in computational power, the increase in security awareness by, e.g., individuals, groups, agencies, government and through intellectual pursuit. Steganography's ultimate objectives, which are undetectability, robustness (resistance to various image processing methods and compression) and capacity of the hidden data, are the main factors that separate it from related techniques such as watermarking and cryptography. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review and analysis of the different existing methods of steganography along with some common standards and guidelines drawn from the literature. This paper concludes with some recommendations and advocates for the object-oriented embedding mechanism. Steganalysis, which is the science of attacking steganography, is not the focus of this survey but nonetheless will be briefly discussed.
... The central operation done by F5 is matrix embedding (subtraction and matrix encoding) with the aim of reducing the amount of changes made to the DCT coefficients. Abdulaziz and Pang [11] use vector quantization called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) coupled with Block codes known as BCH code and 1-Stage discrete Haar Wavelet transforms. They reaffirm that modifying data using a wavelet transformation preserves good quality with little perceptual artefacts. ...
Conference Paper
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In this paper, the concept of object-oriented embedding (OOE) is introduced into information hiding in general and particularly to steganography which is the science that involves undetectable communication of secret data in an appropriate multimedia carrier. The proposal takes advantage of computer vision to orient the embedding process. Although, any existing algorithm can benefit from this technique to enhance its performance against steganalysis attacks, however this work also considers a new embedding algorithm in the wavelet domain using the Binary Reflected Gray Code (BRGC). In the realm of information hiding, one wing focuses on robustness, i.e., watermarking, and another wing focuses on imperceptibility, i.e., steganography. This work advocates for a new steganographic model that meets both robustness as well as imperceptibility. Resilience against common steganalysis attacks including the 274-D merged Markov and DCT features while surviving various image processing manipulations are reported. A neural network classifier was trained with features derived from 400 images. Comparisons with existing systems will also be highlighted.
... For the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), the reader is directed to Chen's work[34]. Abdulaziz, and Pang[35], use vector quantization called Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) coupled with Block codes known as BCH code and 1-Stage discrete Haar Wavelet transforms. They reaffirm that modifying data using a wavelet transformation preserves good quality with little perceptual artifacts. ...
Conference Paper
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Steganography is defined as the science of hiding or embedding ";data"; in a transmission medium. Its ultimate objectives, which are undetectability, robustness (i.e., against image processing and other attacks) and capacity of the hidden data (i.e., how much data we can hide in the carrier file), are the main factors that distinguish it from other "; sisters-in science"; techniques, namely watermarking and Cryptography. This paper provides an overview of well known Steganography methods. It identifies current research problems in this area and discusses how our current research approach could solve some of these problems. We propose using human skin tone detection in colour images to form an adaptive context for an edge operator which will provide an excellent secure location for data hiding.
Research
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Steganography is the science that involves communicating secret data in an appropriate multimedia carrier like image, video and audio files. it does not replace cryptography but rather boots the security using its obscurity features. When we work on a network the security requirements of a user as well as a network increases. There are number of available ways over the network to achieve the information security. Till now the available methods hide the secret data over the image on a fixed pattern that makes a user identify the pattern easily. We are providing a dynamic pattern extraction approach using biometric. It advocates an object-oriented approach in which skin tone detected areas in the image are selected for embedding where possible. After detecting the skin area, edge detection is performed by using the canny edge detection method. As the edges will be detected we will use this area as the pattern to hide the data over the image. The secret data is compressed using the DWT technique and then further compressed secret information is encrypted using RSA algorithm with bit shift method. This proposed technique provides more security to the data as data is embedded not in the whole image but only at some specified location. Due to this image distortion of the carrier image is less and it is difficult to identify the Secret image.
Article
Steganography is the primary method by which individuals can communicate covertly; cryptography, on the other hand, fails at this, as it is possible to detect (the presence of) encrypted-communication. Steganalysis has been used to detect the presence of steganography and acts as a countermeasure to it. The ongoing race between image-steganography and steganalysis methods has resulted in the need for this paper which surveys and compares developments in these two intertwined-fields. This work covers over 150 papers that demonstrate the significant improvements made in steganography and steganalysis over the last three-decades. We mention the novelty of the method proposed in each paper, as well as the evaluation results and the paper's contribution to the field. We provide several taxonomies for steganography and steganalysis methods, based on the approach and techniques underlying the methods, which allows us to perform the first comprehensive comparison of steganography and steganalysis methods. This comparison sheds light on the existing-gaps between the two connected domains and can be used to identify and prioritize the steganography methods that require immediate remediation using steganalysis methods. Lastly, we follow the chronological-evolution of steganography and steganalysis methods over the years, an overview which highlights the infinite-nature of this race.
Thesis
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English: Contributions to digital watermaring of still images in the wavelet transform Corina Naforniţă Scientific advisors: Prof.Dr.Eng. Monica Borda (UTC-N), Prof.Dr.Eng. Alexandru Isar (UPT) The thesis make an analysis of copyright protection schemes design for still images using watermarking in the wavelet domain, having 226 pages, 6 chapters, bibliography and a list of my own publications. The first three chapters define the watermarking techniques, review the main results already reported in literature. The chapters 4 and 5 present my original contributions being proposed several architectures of watermarking systems. All the results have already been published in the Proceedings of prestigious national or international conferences. Some af them have been cited by others authors working in the same field. The chapter 6 contains the conclusions and personal contributions. These are refering to: the classification and critical appreciation of the watermarking methods and attacks, the conclusion being that the digital watermaring in the wavelet transform domain is the most promising; where should the watermark be inserted (in the spatial or transform domain) and to to obtain a robust watermark in what resolution levels of DWT (all, low or high resolution) and in what subbands; what detector architecture ensure the best estimete of watermark; how to make perceptual watermarks; how to evaluate robustness of perceptual watermarks. These contributions are: 1. The informed watermarking [NI03] in the diagonal detail subband of the first resolution level selecting the coefficients to be watermarked using experimental tresholds. 2. The informed watermarking [NBK04] in the all resolution levels, using the same method to select the wavelet coefficients. Detection is made from all resolution levels, or from the last resolution level, less affected by common signal processing. 3. A comparison of our method [NBK04] with a quantization based watermarking method – Kundur and Hatzinakos – in the wavelet domain, or the method in the DCT domain – Cox et al. [CKLS97]. In the next proposed method, [NB05], the images watermarked have a lower watermark strength, hence the quality of the images are comparable, our method being superior to the method proposed by Cox et al. 4. For detecting the watermark, we analyze three types of detectors; the third detector, max-correlation, extracts every estimate of the watermark, [Naf05b], and the watermark with highest correlation with the original one is the response of the detector. 5. The third watermarking method with non-blind detector, selects the wavelet coefficients on the basis of a statistical analysis, [NIB05]. As such, fewer coefficients are affected and the watermark is more robust. 6. A new type of perceptual mask is proposed [NIB06a], using a perceptual mask: data can be embedded in all detail wavelet coefficients, with variable watermark energy. The method is more robust while the quality of the watermarked image is superior. 7. An extension of this method is proposed, [NIB06b], which hides the watermark in lower frequency subbands. This makes the watermark more attack resilient. 8. The evaluation of robustness for perceptual watermarks only when invisibility criteria are satisfied, [Naf07a]. 9. The most important contribution is the method [Naf07b], the watermark is inserted in all resolution levels; the robustness of this method is superior to the one presented by Barni et al. and the attack is resilient to the possible erasure of the first level detail subbands. The third method uses three types of detection i) from all resolution levels, ii) separately from each level, max-level, considering the maximum detector response from each level and iii) separately from each subband, max-subband, considering the maximum detector response from each subband. The method is the most attack resilient comparing with [BBP01], given the fact that the insertion is made on all subbands and on all resolution levels and we use the diversity of the wavelet transform in the detection process. The three detectors can be combined to optimize the watermark extracting, being the final result of the thesis. Romanian: Contribuţii la marcarea transparentă a imaginilor în domeniul transformatei wavelet Corina Naforniţă Conducători şt.: Prof.Dr.Ing. Monica Borda (UTC-N), Prof.Dr.Ing. Alexandru Isar (UPT) Lucrarea analizează construcţia sistemelor de protecţie a drepturilor de autor, la imagini, prin marcare transparentă (watermarking) în domeniul transformatei wavelet, are 226 de pagini, 6 capitole, lista bibliografică, lista publicaţiilor personale. În primele capitole e analizată literatura şi se definesc tehnicile de marcare. Capitolele 4 şi 5 prezintă contribuţiile originale, fiind propuse mai multe arhitecturi de sisteme de marcare transparentă, rezultatele fiind publicate în volumele unor conferinţe internationale prestigioase, din ţară sau străinătate. Unele dintre aceste articole au fost citate de alţi cercetători din domeniu. În capitolul 6 sunt prezentate concluziile şi contribuţiile personale. Ele se referă la: clasificarea şi aprecierea critică a metodelor de marcare transparentă şi a atacurilor, subliniind că marcarea în domeniul transformatei wavelet, mai ales cea adaptivă, este promiţătoare; la modul de plasare al marcajului pentru creşterea robusteţii lui: în domeniul spaţial sau al unei transformate, în care nivel de descompunere al DWT (toate, cele de rezoluţie inferioară sau superioară), în care din subbenzile DWT; la arhitectura de detector ce asigură extragerea optimă a marcajului; la cum să se facă marcarea perceptuală; la cum se evaluează robusteţea marcajelor perceptuale. Contribuţiile originale (cap. 4 şi 5) sunt: 1. Marcare informată [NI03] în subbanda de detalii diagonale, primul nivel de rezoluţie, sau în toate subbenzile primului nivel, folosind praguri experimentale pentru selectarea coeficienţilor care se marchează. 2. Marcare informată în cele trei nivele de rezoluţie, cu aceeaşi selecţie a coeficienţilor wavelet. Detecţia se face din toate nivelele, sau din ultimul nivel de rezoluţie, mai puţin afectat de prelucrări de semnal. 3. Comparaţie a metodei propuse [NBK04], cu cea prezentată de Kundur şi Hatzinakos de tip cuantizare în domeniul wavelet, respectiv faţă de cea din domeniul DCT de tip spread-spectrum prezentată de Cox et al. Apoi [NB05], intensitatea de marcare este redusă faţă de [CKLS97], imaginile nu sunt vizibil afectate de procesul de marcare, calitatea imaginilor este comparabilă, metoda fiind superioară. 4. Pentru detecţia marcajului la a doua metodă am analizat trei tipuri de detectoare; al treilea detector, max-correlation, estimând marcajul cu corelaţie maximă cu cel original [Naf05b]. 5. Am propus [NIB05] o abordare statistică pentru a selecta mai puţini coeficienţi wavelet în care se înserează marcajul, dar răspunsul detectorului este mai bun, coeficienţii mari fiind mai robuşti. Selecţia pragurilor e bazată pe proprietăţile statistice ale coeficienţilor wavelet. 6. Am propus un nou tip de mascare perceptuală [NIB06a] ce ascunde datele în toţi coeficienţii wavelet de detaliu, cu intensitate de marcare variabilă, cu o mască perceptuală; metoda este mai robustă iar calitatea imaginilor marcate este superioară faţă de [BBP01].7. O extensie a metodei [NIB06b] ascunde imperceptibil marcajul şi în subbenzile de joasă frecvenţă, ce creşte robusteţea. 8. Evaluarea robusteţii marcajelor perceptuale doar când criteriile de invizibilitate sunt satisfăcute [Naf07a]. 9. Cea mai importantă contribuţie este metoda [Naf07b], cu marcaj în toate nivelele, util în cazul ştergerii subbenzilor de frecvenţă înaltă care conţin marcajul la [BBP01]. Am propus şi evaluat trei detectoare: i) din toate nivelele de rezoluţie, ii) separat din fiecare nivel, max-level, şi iii) separat din fiecare subbandă, max-subband. Metoda este mai bună la diverse atacuri decât cea din [BBP01], fapt explicat prin estimatul mai bun al măştii perceptuale şi diversitatea transformării wavelet. Rezultatele celor trei detectoare pot fi fuzionate, ameliorându-se în continuare extragerea marcajului, fiind rezultatul final al tezei de doctorat.
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حفظ امنيت اطلاعات ديجيتالی که در يک بستر ارتباطی آزاد مانند اينترنت فرستاده می شود ، هميشه بحث بر انگيز بوده است. برای افزايش امنيت می توان ارتباطات خاص را مخفی نمود. يک پيغام که به صورت نامرئی به وسيله ی يک روش پنهان نگاری در يک شئ پنهان شده است، توجه ديگران را جلب نمی کند. پنهان نگاری يکی از شاخه های رمز نگاری بـوده و هنر پنهان کردن اطلاعات در يک رسانه ی ميزبان مانند صوت، تصوير، ويدئو، يا متن است. روشهای متعددی برای پنهان نگاری در تصوير ارائه شده اند که اين روش ها بيت های اطلاعات را در حوزه ی مکان و يا حوزه ی تبديل تصوير پوشانه جاسازی می کنند. اين نوشتار يک بررسی جديد و کامل از متد های مختلف موجود، در زمينه ی پنهان نگاری در تصاوير ارائه ميکند.
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Information hiding embeds secret data inside a cover format such as text, image, audio or video. The present study examines the feasibility of hiding secret data in a greyscale still image. The proposed method uses the secret data bits content, the difference between the target pixel value and the mean of some neighbour pixel values to determine how many secret data bits should be embedded in the target pixel. The present study first notes some limitations in Chang and Tseng's method and then proposes a generalised method that provides better stego image quality and embedding capacity than that of Chang and Tseng's method.
Conference Paper
This paper describes a robust, oblivious data embedding scheme which uses lattice vector quantization. The embedding is done in the DCT domain. The signature image is vector quantized and the indices obtained are coded using error-correcting codes (BCH codes). The codewords obtained are multiplied by a scaling factor and perturbed into the DCT coefficients of the host image which is lattice vector quantized. Experimental results of the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) of the watermarked image for different host images and the PSNR of the recovered signature image for different values of scaling factors stand a testimony for the validity of this method
Conference Paper
Embedding watermark in the wavelet becomes more attractive to most researchers as it could provide better performance. In this paper present a method of embedding binary visualized image into the host image by modifying coefficients of wavelet domain in LL bands with appropriate strength factor in order to compromise between acceptable imperceptibility level and attacks' resistance. Qualified significant wavelet tree (QSWT) is used in both to select locations where watermark data are to be embedded, and to find locations of watermark in the extraction process. Results show that the proposed method successfully achieves robustness level of various attacks such as image processing, rotation attack etc.
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This paper presents an original data-hiding application where the payload is intimately related to the host data. On the other hand, we want to preserve this relationship so that each part of the payload is hidden in the related part of the host. On the other hand, we want to ensure that a degradation of the host data implies a proportional degradation of the related part of the hidden data.
Article
One of challenges encountered in information bit hiding is the reliability of information bit detection. This paper addresses the issue and presents an algorithm in the discrete cosing transform (DCT) domain with a communication theory approach. It embeds information bits (first) in the DC and (then in the) low-frequency AC coefficients. To extract the hidden information bits from a possibly corrupted marked image with a low error probability, we model information hiding as a digital communication problem and apply Bose??Chaudhuri??Hocquenghen channel coding with soft-decision decoding based on matched filtering. The robustness of the hidden bits has been tested with StirMark. The experimental results demonstrate that the embedded information bits are perceptually transparent and can successfully resist common signal processing procedures, jitter attack, aspect ratio variation, scaling change, small angle rotation, small amount cropping, and JPEG compression with quality factor as low as 10. Compared with some information hiding algorithms reported in the literature, it appears that the hidden information bits with the proposed approach are relatively more robust. While the approach is presented for gray level images, it can also be applied to color images and video sequences.
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The paper discusses the feasibility of coding an “undetectable” digital water mark on a standard 512×512 intensity image with an 8 bit gray scale. The watermark is capable of carrying such information as authentication or authorisation codes, or a legend essential for image interpretation. This capability is envisaged to find application in image tagging, copyright enforcement, counterfeit protection, and controlled access. Two methods of implementation are discussed. The first is based on bit plane manipulation of the LSB, which offers easy and rapid decoding. The second method utilises linear addition of the water mark to the image data, and is more difficult to decode, offering inherent security. This linearity property also allows some image processing, such as averaging, to take place on the image, without corrupting the water mark beyond recovery. Either method is potentially compatible with JPEG and MPEG processing
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Embedding information into multimedia data is a topic that has gained increasing attention recently. For video broadcast applications, watermarking of video, and especially of already encoded video, is interesting. We present a scheme for robust interoperable watermarking of MPEG-2 encoded video. The watermark is embedded either into the uncoded video or into the MPEG-2 bitstream, and can be retrieved from the decoded video. The scheme working on encoded video is of much lower complexity than a complete decoding process followed by watermarking in the pixel domain and re-encoding. Although an existing MPEG-2 bitstream is partly altered, the scheme avoids drift problems. The scheme has been implemented and practical results show that a robust watermark can be embedded into MPEG encoded video which can be used to transmit arbitrary binary information at a data rate of several bytes/second. Keywords: watermarking, video, MPEG-2, video broadcast 1 Introduction With digital broadcast of vi...
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Information hiding techniques have recently become important in a number of application areas. Digital audio, video, and pictures are increasingly furnished with distinguishing but imperceptible marks, which may contain a hidden copyright notice or serial number or even help to prevent unauthorised copying directly. Military communications systems make increasing use of traffic security techniques which, rather than merely concealing the content of a message using encryption, seek to conceal its sender, its receiver or its very existence. Similar techniques are used in some mobile phone systems and schemes proposed for digital elections. Criminals try to use whatever traffic security properties are provided intentionally or otherwise in the available communications systems, and police forces try to restrict their use. However, many of the techniques proposed in this young and rapidly evolving field can trace their history back to antiquity; and many of them are surprisingly easy to circumvent. In this article, we try to give an overview of the field; of what we know, what works, what does not, and what are the interesting topics for research.
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An efficient and intuitive algorithm is presented for the design of vector quantizers based either on a known probabilistic model or on a long training sequence of data. The basic properties of the algorithm are discussed and demonstrated by examples. Quite general distortion measures and long blocklengths are allowed, as exemplified by the design of parameter vector quantizers of ten-dimensional vectors arising in Linear Predictive Coded (LPC) speech compression with a complicated distortion measure arising in LPC analysis that does not depend only on the error vector.
Conference Paper
We introduce a scheme for hiding high bit-rate supplementary data, such as secondary video, into a digital video stream by directly modifying the pixels in the video frames. The technique requires no separate channel or bit interleaving to transmit the extra information. The data is invisibly embedded using a perception-based projection and quantization algorithm. The data hiding algorithm supports user-defined levels of accessibility and security. We illustrate our algorithm using examples of real-time video-in-video and speech-in-video. We also demonstrate the robustness of the data hiding procedure to video degradation and distortion, e.g., those that result from additive noise and compression
Conference Paper
An approach to embedding gray scale images using a discrete wavelet transform is proposed. The pro- posed scheme enables using signature images that could be as much as 25% of the host image data and hence could be used both in digital watermarking as well as image/data hiding. In digital watermarking the primary concern is the recovery or checking for signature even when the embedded image has been changed by image processing operations. Thus the embedding scheme should be robust to typical opera- tions such as low-pass filtering and lossy compression. In contrast, for data hiding applications it is impor- tant that there should not be any visible changes to the host data that is used to transmit a hidden image. In addition, in both data hiding and watermarking, it is desirable that it is difficult or impossible for unautho- rized persons to recover the embedded signatures. The proposed scheme provides a simple control param- eter that can be tailored to either hiding or watermarking purposes, and is robust to operations such as JPEG compression. Experimental results demonstrate that high quality recovery of the signature data is possible.
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Digital watermarks have been proposed in recent literature as the means for copyright protection of multimedia data. In this paper we address the capability of invisible watermarking schemes to resolve copyright ownerships. We will show that rightful ownerships cannot be resolved by current watermarking schemes alone. In addition, in the absence of standardization of watermarking procedures, anyone can claim ownership of any watermarked image. Specifically, we provide counterfeit watermarking schemes that can be performed on a watermarked image to allow multiple claims of rightful ownerships. We also propose non-invertible watermarking schemes in this paper and discuss in general the usefulness of digital watermarks in identifying the rightful copyright owners. The results, coupled with the recent attacks on some image watermarks, further imply that we have to carefully re-think our approaches to invisible watermarking of images, and re-evaluate the promises, applications and limitatio...
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