A review and open issues of diverse text watermarking techniques in spatial domain

Nowadays, information hiding is becoming a helpful technique and fetches more attention due to the fast growth of using the internet; it is applied for sending secret information by using different techniques. Watermarking is one of major important technique in information hiding. Watermarking is of hiding secret data into a carrier media to provide the privacy and integrity of information so that no one can recognize and detect it's accepted the sender and receiver. In watermarking, many various carrier formats can be used such as an image, video, audio, and text. The text is most popular used as a carrier files due to its frequency on the internet. There are many techniques variables for the text watermarking; each one has its own robust and susceptible points. In this study, we conducted a review of text watermarking in the spatial domain to explore the term text watermarking by reviewing, collecting, synthesizing and analyze the challenges of different studies which related to this area published from 2013 to 2018. The aims of this paper are to provide an overview of text watermarking and comparison between approved studies as discussed according to the Arabic text characters, payload capacity, Imperceptibility, authentication, and embedding technique to open important research issues in the future work to obtain a robust method

Tamper detection of qur'anic text watermarking scheme based on vowel letters with Kashida using exclusive-or and queueing technique

The most sensitive Arabic text available online is the digital Holy Qur’an. This sacred Islamic religious book is recited by all Muslims worldwide including the non-Arabs as part of their worship needs. It should be protected from any kind of tampering to keep its invaluable meaning intact. Different characteristics of the Arabic letters like the vowels ( أ . و . ي ), Kashida (extended letters), and other symbols in the Holy Qur’an must be secured from alterations. The cover text of the al-Qur’an and its watermarked text are different due to the low values of the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Embedding Ratio (ER), and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC), thus the location for tamper detection gets low accuracy. Watermarking technique with enhanced attributes must therefore be designed for the Qur’an text using Arabic vowel letters with Kashida. Most of the existing detection methods that tried to achieve accurate results related to the tampered Qur’an text often show various limitations like diacritics, alif mad surah, double space, separate shapes of Arabic letters, and Kashida. The gap addressed by this research is to improve the security of Arabic text in the Holy Qur’an by using vowel letters with Kashida. The purpose of this research is to enhance Quran text watermarking scheme based on exclusive-or and reversing with queueing techniques. The methodology consists of four phases. The first phase is pre-processing followed by the embedding process phase to hide the data after the vowel letters wherein if the secret bit is ‘1’, insert the Kashida but do not insert it if the bit is ‘0’. The third phase is extraction process and the last phase is to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by using PSNR (for the imperceptibility), ER (for the capacity), and NCC (for the security of the watermarking). The experimental results revealed the improvement of the NCC by 1.77 %, PSNR by 9.6 %, and ER by 8.6 % compared to available current schemes. Hence, it can be concluded that the proposed scheme has the ability to detect the location of tampering accurately for attacks of insertion, deletion, and reordering

Design a system for an approved video copyright over cloud based on biometric iris and random walk generator using watermark technique

Copyright is a tool for preventing anyone forged to copy an electronic work from another person and claim that electronic work is referred to him. Since the identity of the person is always determined by his name and biometrics, there is a concern to handle this information, to preserve the copyright. In this paper, a new idea for copyright technology is used to prove video copyright, by using blind watermarking technique, the ownership information is hidden inside video frames using linear congruential generator (LCG) for adapted the locations of vector features extracted from the name and biometric image of the owner instead of hidden the watermark in the Pseudo Noise sequences or any other feature extraction technique. When providing the watermarked vector, a statistical operation is used to increase randomization state for the amplifier factors of LCG function. LCG provides random positions where the owner's information is stored inside the video. The proposed method is not difficult to execute and can present an adaptable imperceptibility and robustness performance. The output results show the robustness of this approach based on the average PSNR of frames for the embedded in 50 frames is around 47.5 dB while the watermark remains undetectable. MSSIM values with range (0.83 to 0.99)

Optimisation of Tamper Localisation and Recovery Watermarking Techniques

Digital watermarking has found many applications in many fields, such as: copyright tracking, media authentication, tamper localisation and recovery, hardware control, and data hiding. The idea of digital watermarking is to embed arbitrary data inside a multimedia cover without affecting the perceptibility of the multimedia cover itself. The main advantage of using digital watermarking over other techniques, such as signature based techniques, is that the watermark is embedded into the multimedia cover itself and will not be removed even with the format change. Image watermarking techniques are categorised according to their robustness against modification into: fragile, semi-fragile, and robust watermarking. In fragile watermarking any change to the image will affect the watermark, this makes fragile watermarking very useful in image authentication applications, as in medical and forensic fields, where any tampering of the image is: detected, localised, and possibly recovered. Fragile watermarking techniques are also characterised by a higher capacity when compared to semi-fragile and robust watermarking. Semifragile watermarking techniques resist some modifications, such as lossy compression and low pass filtering. Semi-fragile watermarking can be used in authentication and copyright validation applications whenever the amount of embedded information is small and the expected modifications are not severe. Robust watermarking techniques are supposed to withstand more severe modifications, such as rotation and geometrical bending. Robust watermarking is used in copyright validation applications, where copyright information in the image must remains accessible even after severe modification. This research focuses on the application of image watermarking in tamper localisation and recovery and it aims to provide optimisation for some of its aspects. The optimisation aims to produce watermarking techniques that enhance one or more of the following aspects: consuming less payload, having better recovery quality, recovering larger tampered area, requiring less calculations, and being robust against the different counterfeiting attacks. Through the survey of the main existing techniques, it was found that most of them are using two separate sets of data for the localisation and the recovery of the tampered area, which is considered as a redundancy. The main focus in this research is to investigate employing image filtering techniques in order to use only one set of data for both purposes, leading to a reduced redundancy in the watermark embedding and enhanced capacity. Four tamper localisation and recovery techniques were proposed, three of them use one set of data for localisation and recovery while the fourth one is designed to be optimised and gives a better performance even though it uses separate sets of data for localisation and recovery. The four techniques were analysed and compared to two recent techniques in the literature. The performance of the proposed techniques vary from one technique to another. The fourth technique shows the best results regarding recovery quality and Probability of False Acceptance (PFA) when compared to the other proposed techniques and the two techniques in the literature, also, all proposed techniques show better recovery quality when compared to the two techniques in the literature

The Impact of Culture and Religion on Digital Forensics: The Study of the Role of Digital Evidence in the Legal Process in Saudi Arabia

This work contributes to the multi-disciplinary community of researchers in computer science, information technology and computer forensics working together with legal enforcement professionals involved in digital forensic investigations. It is focused on the relationship between scientific approaches underpinning digital forensics and the Islamic law underpinning legal enforcement. Saudi Arabia (KSA) is studied as an example of an Islamic country that has adopted international guidelines, such as ACPO, in its legal enforcement procedures. The relationship between Islamic law and scientific ACPO guidelines is examined in detail through the practices of digital forensic practitioners in the process of discovery, preparation and presentation of digital evidence for use in Islamic courts in KSA. In this context, the influence of religion and culture on the role and status of digital evidence throughout the entire legal process has been the main focus of this research. Similar studies in the literature confirm that culture and religion are significant factors in the relationship between law, legal enforcement procedure and digital evidence. Islamic societies, however, have not been extensively studied from this perspective, and this study aims to address issues that arise at both professional and personal levels. Therefore the research questions that this study aims to answer are: in what way and to what extent Islamic religion and Saudi culture affect the status of digital evidence in the KSA legal process and what principles the practitioners have to observe in the way they treat digital evidence in judicial proceedings. The methodology is based on a mixed-method approach where the pilot questionnaire identified legal professionals who come into contact with digital evidence, their educational and professional profiles. Qualitative methods included case studies, interviews and documentary evidence to discover how their beliefs and attitudes influence their trust in digital evidence. The findings show that a KSA judge would trust witnesses more than digital evidence, due to the influence of tradition, which regards justice and law to arise from the relationship between Man and God. Digital evidence, as it arises from the scientific method, is acceptable, but there is underlying lack of trust in its authenticity, reliability and credibility. In the eyes of the legal enforcement professionals working in all areas of the KSA legal process, acceptance of digital evidence in the KSA judicial system can best be improved if knowledge, education and skills of digital forensics specialists is improved also, so that they can be trusted as expert witnesses. This further shows the significance of KSA laws, regulations and education of digital forensic experts as the primary means for establishing trust in digital evidence. Further research following from this study will be focused on comparative studies of other Islamic non-Islamic legal systems as they adopt and adapt western guidelines such as ACPO to their religion, culture and legal systemsSaudi Cultural Bureau,London, U

Striking a balance between the secrecy of online communication and online criminal investigation in South Africa

In the Republic of South Africa (‘RSA’), there are exponentially increasing and indeterminable consequential risks and breaches involved in the spontaneous and indispensable personal, official and general anatomic uses of the quicksilver, complex and delicate conscriptive, interoperable, non-compartmentalised and non-passworded compartmentalised online communication devices, technologies, networks, applications, and services. These risks and breaches result in a disequilibrium in the following antithetical legal vector argument. On the one hand, these risks and breaches are attributed to the non-recognition, and inadequate protection of the independent and unique right in online communication, the concept of which originates from the jurisprudence of the broad gamut of the right to privacy. On the other hand, these risks are exacerbated by the increasing, unrestrictive and perpetual techno-legal abuse of online communication by law enforcement agencies or officers (‘LEAs’ or ‘LEOs’) of the alternative conduct of the covert online criminal investigation (‘OCI’) of serious offences, arising from the dearth of and non-compliance with the regulation for the conduct of an OCI. This dual study clinically examines the irreconcilable conflict between the protection of the right in online communication and the public criminal mandate of the State to conduct an OCI of serious offences. Firstly, this study investigates the existence of the levels of risks involved in the conscriptive, interoperable, non-compartmentalised and non-passworded compartmentalised continua of privacy interests in online communication, requiring a corresponding protective and secure regime in the conduct of an OCI. Secondly, it probes into the various substantive and procedural thresholds required in the limitation of the right in online communication when conducting an OCI. Lastly, it examines the mechanisms for institutional and structural independence, competence, due process, separation of powers and checks and balances in the conduct and oversight of the conduct of an OCI in the RSA. Consequently, the examination of the above issues reveals the absence, inadequacy of, and non-compliance with the substantive and procedural constitutional, legislative and policy framework that caters for the protection of the right in online communication and the conduct of an OCI in the RSA. Accordingly and specifically, this study proposes that the RSA adopts an adequate constitutional and single legislative framework to address the contemporary societal techno-legal tapestry in the conflict between the right in online communication and the conduct of an OCI of serious offences in the RSA as follows. Firstly, it is imperative to unequivocally, in the legal framework in the RSA, including the Constitution, consider the existence of higher levels of risks and the simultaneous or consequential recognition of the higher levels of protection of the invaluability in online communication —including the emerging quantum computing— in contrast with non-online communications. This contrast hierarchically compels the unimpeachable protection of the independent right to the secrecy of online communication (‘SOC’), which is inadequately and incongruously protected as mere online privacy in section 14 of the Constitution of the RSA. Secondly, it is equally crucial to consider the application of or compliance with adequate substantive and procedural scientific threshold requirements to conduct an OCI of serious offences in the RSA. These requirements include the application of: online conscription; section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act; ‘no server, but law’ principle as opposed to the U.S. ‘no server, no law’ principle; robotic and non-robotic OCI; ex-parte and non-ex-parte verbal and written quadripartite techno-legal individual and mass online criminal investigation of privileged and non-privileged online communications by ghost and non-ghost applicants; pre and post OCI data management procedure and admissibility of void and voidable evidence. Furthermore, it is of great importance to apply the all-embracing proportionality principle in section 36 of the Constitution in which this study, from a contrarian belief, classifies serious offences into six categories under four criteria and propounds some definite and functional Popoola mathematical and non-mathematical formulae in the standard of proof required to conduct an OCI, the procedure of which should be incorporated in a legislation. Thirdly and finally, it is of utmost significance to, in the legal framework in the RSA, including the Constitution, consider the application of or compliance with safeguard mechanisms in the conduct of an OCI. These mechanisms are to ensure the inviolability of the principles or requirements of structural and institutional independence, competence, due process, separation of powers and checks and balances in the conduct and oversight of the conduct of an OCI of serious offences by LEAs or LEOs and other stakeholders respectively.Public, Constitutional, and International LawLL. D

Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022

Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022 is a creative-commons ebook that provides a unique 360 degrees overview of quantum technologies from science and technology to geopolitical and societal issues. It covers quantum physics history, quantum physics 101, gate-based quantum computing, quantum computing engineering (including quantum error corrections and quantum computing energetics), quantum computing hardware (all qubit types, including quantum annealing and quantum simulation paradigms, history, science, research, implementation and vendors), quantum enabling technologies (cryogenics, control electronics, photonics, components fabs, raw materials), quantum computing algorithms, software development tools and use cases, unconventional computing (potential alternatives to quantum and classical computing), quantum telecommunications and cryptography, quantum sensing, quantum technologies around the world, quantum technologies societal impact and even quantum fake sciences. The main audience are computer science engineers, developers and IT specialists as well as quantum scientists and students who want to acquire a global view of how quantum technologies work, and particularly quantum computing. This version is an extensive update to the 2021 edition published in October 2021.Comment: 1132 pages, 920 figures, Letter forma