(In)Security of an Efficient Fingerprinting Scheme with Symmetric and Commutative Encryption of IWDW 2005

We analyze the security of a fingerprinting scheme proposed at IWDW 2005. We show two results, namely that this scheme (1) does riot provide seller security: a dishonest buyer can repudiate the fact that, he redistributed a content, and (2) does riot, provide buyer security: a buyer can be framed by a malicious seller

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

A Lightweight Buyer-Seller Watermarking Protocol

The buyer-seller watermarking protocol enables a seller to successfully identify a traitor from a pirated copy, while preventing the seller from framing an innocent buyer. Based on finite field theory and the homomorphic property of public key cryptosystems such as RSA, several buyer-seller watermarking protocols (N. Memon and P. W. Wong (2001) and C.-L. Lei et al. (2004)) have been proposed previously. However, those protocols require not only large computational power but also substantial network bandwidth. In this paper, we introduce a new buyer-seller protocol that overcomes those weaknesses by managing the watermarks. Compared with the earlier protocols, ours is n times faster in terms of computation, where n is the number of watermark elements, while incurring only O(1/lN) times communication overhead given the finite field parameter lN. In addition, the quality of the watermarked image generated with our method is better, using the same watermark strength

Framework for privacy-aware content distribution in peer-to- peer networks with copyright protection

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. This mass popularity is primarily driven by the efficient distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy and copyright infringement as well as privacy concerns. An end user (buyer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further redistribute the content illegally. Therefore, there is a strong need for content distribution mechanisms over P2P networks that do not pose security and privacy threats to copyright holders and end users, respectively. However, the current systems being developed to provide copyright and privacy protection to merchants and end users employ cryptographic mechanisms, which incur high computational and communication costs, making these systems impractical for the distribution of big files, such as music albums or movies.El uso de soluciones de igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) para la distribución multimedia se ha extendido mundialmente en los últimos años. La amplia popularidad de este paradigma se debe, principalmente, a la distribución eficiente de los contenidos, pero también da lugar a la piratería, a la violación del copyright y a problemas de privacidad. Un usuario final (comprador) de un sistema de distribución de contenidos P2P no quiere revelar su identidad durante una transacción con un propietario de contenidos (comerciante), mientras que el comerciante no quiere que el comprador pueda redistribuir ilegalmente el contenido más adelante. Por lo tanto, existe una fuerte necesidad de mecanismos de distribución de contenidos por medio de redes P2P que no supongan un riesgo de seguridad y privacidad a los titulares de derechos y los usuarios finales, respectivamente. Sin embargo, los sistemas actuales que se desarrollan con el propósito de proteger el copyright y la privacidad de los comerciantes y los usuarios finales emplean mecanismos de cifrado que implican unas cargas computacionales y de comunicaciones muy elevadas que convierten a estos sistemas en poco prácticos para distribuir archivos de gran tamaño, tales como álbumes de música o películas.L'ús de solucions d'igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) per a la distribució multimèdia s'ha estès mundialment els darrers anys. L'àmplia popularitat d'aquest paradigma es deu, principalment, a la distribució eficient dels continguts, però també dóna lloc a la pirateria, a la violació del copyright i a problemes de privadesa. Un usuari final (comprador) d'un sistema de distribució de continguts P2P no vol revelar la seva identitat durant una transacció amb un propietari de continguts (comerciant), mentre que el comerciant no vol que el comprador pugui redistribuir il·legalment el contingut més endavant. Per tant, hi ha una gran necessitat de mecanismes de distribució de continguts per mitjà de xarxes P2P que no comportin un risc de seguretat i privadesa als titulars de drets i els usuaris finals, respectivament. Tanmateix, els sistemes actuals que es desenvolupen amb el propòsit de protegir el copyright i la privadesa dels comerciants i els usuaris finals fan servir mecanismes d'encriptació que impliquen unes càrregues computacionals i de comunicacions molt elevades que fan aquests sistemes poc pràctics per a distribuir arxius de grans dimensions, com ara àlbums de música o pel·lícules

Network communication privacy: traffic masking against traffic analysis

An increasing number of recent experimental works have been demonstrating the supposedly secure channels in the Internet are prone to privacy breaking under many respects, due to traffic features leaking information on the user activity and traffic content. As a matter of example, traffic flow classification at application level, web page identification, language/phrase detection in VoIP communications have all been successfully demonstrated against encrypted channels. In this thesis I aim at understanding if and how complex it is to obfuscate the information leaked by traffic features, namely packet lengths, direction, times. I define a security model that points out what the ideal target of masking is, and then define the optimized and practically implementable masking algorithms, yielding a trade-off between privacy and overhead/complexity of the masking algorithm. Numerical results are based on measured Internet traffic traces. Major findings are that: i) optimized full masking achieves similar overhead values with padding only and in case fragmentation is allowed; ii) if practical realizability is accounted for, optimized statistical masking algorithms attain only moderately better overhead than simple fixed pattern masking algorithms, while still leaking correlation information that can be exploited by the adversary

Privacy Enhancing Technologies for solving the privacy-personalization paradox : taxonomy and survey

Personal data are often collected and processed in a decentralized fashion, within different contexts. For instance, with the emergence of distributed applications, several providers are usually correlating their records, and providing personalized services to their clients. Collected data include geographical and indoor positions of users, their movement patterns as well as sensor-acquired data that may reveal users’ physical conditions, habits and interests. Consequently, this may lead to undesired consequences such as unsolicited advertisement and even to discrimination and stalking. To mitigate privacy threats, several techniques emerged, referred to as Privacy Enhancing Technologies, PETs for short. On one hand, the increasing pressure on service providers to protect users’ privacy resulted in PETs being adopted. One the other hand, service providers have built their business model on personalized services, e.g. targeted ads and news. The objective of the paper is then to identify which of the PETs have the potential to satisfy both usually divergent - economical and ethical - purposes. This paper identifies a taxonomy classifying eight categories of PETs into three groups, and for better clarity, it considers three categories of personalized services. After defining and presenting the main features of PETs with illustrative examples, the paper points out which PETs best fit each personalized service category. Then, it discusses some of the inter-disciplinary privacy challenges that may slow down the adoption of these techniques, namely: technical, social, legal and economic concerns. Finally, it provides recommendations and highlights several research directions

Layer-based Privacy and Security Architecture for Cloud Data Sharing

The management of data while maintaining its utility and preservation of security scheme is a matter of concern for the cloud owner. In order to minimize the overhead at cloud service provider of applying security over each document and then send it to the client, we propose a layered architecture. This approach maintains security of the sensitive document and privacy of its data sensitivity. To make a balance between data security and utility, the proposed approach categorizes the data according to its sensitivity. Perseverance of various categorization requires different algorithmic schemes. We set up a cloud distributed environment where data is categorized into four levels of sensitivity; public, confidential, secret, top secret and a different approach has been used to preserve the security at each level. At the most sensitive layers i.e. secret and top secret data, we made a provision to detect the faulty node that is responsible for data leakage. Finally, experimental analysis is carried out to analyze the performance of the layered approach. The experimental results show that time taken (in ms) in processing 200 documents of size 20 MB is 437, 2239, 3142, 3900 for public, confidential, secret and top secret data respectively when the documents are distributed among distinct users, which proves the practicality of the proposed approach

Multimedia

The nowadays ubiquitous and effortless digital data capture and processing capabilities offered by the majority of devices, lead to an unprecedented penetration of multimedia content in our everyday life. To make the most of this phenomenon, the rapidly increasing volume and usage of digitised content requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation of multimedia methodologies, in order to meet the relentless change of requirements from both the user and system perspectives. Advances in Multimedia provides readers with an overview of the ever-growing field of multimedia by bringing together various research studies and surveys from different subfields that point out such important aspects. Some of the main topics that this book deals with include: multimedia management in peer-to-peer structures & wireless networks, security characteristics in multimedia, semantic gap bridging for multimedia content and novel multimedia applications