Information Forensics and Security: A quarter-century-long journey

Information forensics and security (IFS) is an active R&D area whose goal is to ensure that people use devices, data, and intellectual properties for authorized purposes and to facilitate the gathering of solid evidence to hold perpetrators accountable. For over a quarter century, since the 1990s, the IFS research area has grown tremendously to address the societal needs of the digital information era. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has emerged as an important hub and leader in this area, and this article celebrates some landmark technical contributions. In particular, we highlight the major technological advances by the research community in some selected focus areas in the field during the past 25 years and present future trends

Watermarking security

International audienceThis chapter deals with applications where watermarking is a security primitive included in a larger system protecting the value of multimedia content. In this context, there might exist dishonest users, in the sequel so-called attackers, willing to read/overwrite hidden messages or simply to remove the watermark signal.The goal of this section is to play the role of the attacker. We analyze means to deduce information about the watermarking technique that will later ease the forgery of attacked copies. This chapter first proposes a topology of the threats in Section 6.1, introducing three different concepts: robustness, worst-case attacks, and security. Previous chapter has already discussed watermark robustness. We focus on worst-case attacks in Section 6.2, on the way to measure watermarking security in Section 6.3, and on the classical tools to break a watermarking scheme in Section 6.4. This tour of watermarking security concludes by a summary of what we know and still do not know about it (Section 6.5) and a review of oracle attacks (Section 6.6). Last, Section 6.7 deals with protocol attacks, a notion which underlines the illusion of security that a watermarking primitive might bring when not properly used in some applications

Schémas de tatouage d'images, schémas de tatouage conjoint à la compression, et schémas de dissimulation de données

In this manuscript we address data-hiding in images and videos. Specifically we address robust watermarking for images, robust watermarking jointly with compression, and finally non robust data-hiding.The first part of the manuscript deals with high-rate robust watermarking. After having briefly recalled the concept of informed watermarking, we study the two major watermarking families : trellis-based watermarking and quantized-based watermarking. We propose, firstly to reduce the computational complexity of the trellis-based watermarking, with a rotation based embedding, and secondly to introduce a trellis-based quantization in a watermarking system based on quantization.The second part of the manuscript addresses the problem of watermarking jointly with a JPEG2000 compression step or an H.264 compression step. The quantization step and the watermarking step are achieved simultaneously, so that these two steps do not fight against each other. Watermarking in JPEG2000 is achieved by using the trellis quantization from the part 2 of the standard. Watermarking in H.264 is performed on the fly, after the quantization stage, choosing the best prediction through the process of rate-distortion optimization. We also propose to integrate a Tardos code to build an application for traitors tracing.The last part of the manuscript describes the different mechanisms of color hiding in a grayscale image. We propose two approaches based on hiding a color palette in its index image. The first approach relies on the optimization of an energetic function to get a decomposition of the color image allowing an easy embedding. The second approach consists in quickly obtaining a color palette of larger size and then in embedding it in a reversible way.Dans ce manuscrit nous abordons l’insertion de données dans les images et les vidéos. Plus particulièrement nous traitons du tatouage robuste dans les images, du tatouage robuste conjointement à la compression et enfin de l’insertion de données (non robuste).La première partie du manuscrit traite du tatouage robuste à haute capacité. Après avoir brièvement rappelé le concept de tatouage informé, nous étudions les deux principales familles de tatouage : le tatouage basé treillis et le tatouage basé quantification. Nous proposons d’une part de réduire la complexité calculatoire du tatouage basé treillis par une approche d’insertion par rotation, ainsi que d’autre part d’introduire une approche par quantification basée treillis au seind’un système de tatouage basé quantification.La deuxième partie du manuscrit aborde la problématique de tatouage conjointement à la phase de compression par JPEG2000 ou par H.264. L’idée consiste à faire en même temps l’étape de quantification et l’étape de tatouage, de sorte que ces deux étapes ne « luttent pas » l’une contre l’autre. Le tatouage au sein de JPEG2000 est effectué en détournant l’utilisation de la quantification basée treillis de la partie 2 du standard. Le tatouage au sein de H.264 est effectué à la volée, après la phase de quantification, en choisissant la meilleure prédiction via le processus d’optimisation débit-distorsion. Nous proposons également d’intégrer un code de Tardos pour construire une application de traçage de traîtres.La dernière partie du manuscrit décrit les différents mécanismes de dissimulation d’une information couleur au sein d’une image en niveaux de gris. Nous proposons deux approches reposant sur la dissimulation d’une palette couleur dans son image d’index. La première approche consiste à modéliser le problème puis à l’optimiser afin d’avoir une bonne décomposition de l’image couleur ainsi qu’une insertion aisée. La seconde approche consiste à obtenir, de manière rapide et sûre, une palette de plus grande dimension puis à l’insérer de manière réversible

Sensor Data Integrity Verification for Real-time and Resource Constrained Systems

Sensors are used in multiple applications that touch our lives and have become an integral part of modern life. They are used in building intelligent control systems in various industries like healthcare, transportation, consumer electronics, military, etc. Many mission-critical applications require sensor data to be secure and authentic. Sensor data security can be achieved using traditional solutions like cryptography and digital signatures, but these techniques are computationally intensive and cannot be easily applied to resource constrained systems. Low complexity data hiding techniques, on the contrary, are easy to implement and do not need substantial processing power or memory. In this applied research, we use and configure the established low complexity data hiding techniques from the multimedia forensics domain. These techniques are used to secure the sensor data transmissions in resource constrained and real-time environments such as an autonomous vehicle. We identify the areas in an autonomous vehicle that require sensor data integrity and propose suitable water-marking techniques to verify the integrity of the data and evaluate the performance of the proposed method against different attack vectors. In our proposed method, sensor data is embedded with application specific metadata and this process introduces some distortion. We analyze this embedding induced distortion and its impact on the overall sensor data quality to conclude that watermarking techniques, when properly configured, can solve sensor data integrity verification problems in an autonomous vehicle.Ph.D.College of Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of Michigan-Dearbornhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167387/3/Raghavendar Changalvala Final Dissertation.pdfDescription of Raghavendar Changalvala Final Dissertation.pdf : Dissertatio

Evaluation of an Optimal Watermark Tampering Attack Against Dirty Paper Trellis Schemes

International audienceBenchmarking watermarking systems now goes beyond only evaluating the ability of the embedded watermark to with- stand common signal primitives such as filtering, resampling, lossy compression, D/A-A/D conversions, etc. Evaluation procedures have to consider how much information leaks from a watermarking system since such knowledge could prove most helpful to design very powerful attacks. This paper further refines an attack on dirty paper watermarking schemes which relies on security weaknesses i.e. information leakage. In particular, additional constraints are introduced to be able to handle ‘complex' trellises. Moreover, the ef- ficiency of this attack has been evaluated for different trel- lis configurations. Quite counter-intuitively, increasing the number of states in the trellis seems to enhance both the robustness and the security of the system

La política irlandesa en Cruiskeen Lawn (1940-66), de Myles na gCopaleen

Abstract Irish writer Brian O’Nolan, also known by his pseudonyms Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen, has been lauded, alongside James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of the central figures of Irish modernism. His novels At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and The Third Policeman (1940, published posthumously in 1967) have consistently drawn scholarly attention due to their enigmatic and experimental narrative structures. For this reason, however, many of his other works have been neglected until recently. One such example is the newspaper column Cruiskeen Lawn, published as Myles na gCopaleen in the Irish Times on an almost daily basis from 1940 to 1966. Cruiskeen Lawn was a comic literary column devoted to offering a sharp and incisive portrait of mid-twentieth century Ireland. While dedicated scholarship on Cruiskeen Lawn has emerged in recent years, one of the aspects that most critics have failed to touch upon is the question of Irish politics. Brian O’Nolan was witness to tumultous changes to the social, cultural and political fabric of the country: from the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the economic expansion of the 1960s, including the period of The Emergency (1939-45) and the years of economic stagnation and swelling emigration (1945-54). As such, his Cruiskeen Lawn column became a site of contention and political commentary on all aspects of Irish politics, ranging from the role of the country in international affairs to local minutiae. Conscious of the historical significance of twenty-six years’ worth of political commentary by a renowned intellectual figure such as O’Nolan, this dissertation examines the total of 4,032 newspaper articles that compose Cruiskeen Lawn with a twofold aim: firstly, to understand Myles na gCopaleen’s Cruiskeen Lawn as a work of political commentary and to view the column as an accurate account of mid-twentieth-century Ireland; and secondly, to determine O’Nolan’s own political philosophy through a close reading of his opinions on the political events discussed throughout the dissertation. Resumen El escritor irlandés Brian O’Nolan, también conocido bajo sus seudónimos Flann O’Brien y Myles na gCopaleen, ha sido celebrado como una de las figuras centrales, junto a James Joyce y Samuel Beckett, del modernismo irlandés. Sus novelas At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) y The Third Policeman (1940, publicada de manera póstuma en 1967) han sido foco de una atención académica constante debido a sus estructuras narrativas enigmáticas y experimentales. Sin embargo, debido a ello se ha prestado poca atención a muchas de sus otras obras hasta ahora. Un ejemplo es Cruiskeen Lawn, una columna periodística que publicó como Myles na gCopaleen en el Irish Times casi diariamente desde 1940 hasta 1966. Cruiskeen Lawn era una columna literaria de tono cómico cuyo objetivo principal era ofrecer un retrato preciso e incisivo de la Irlanda de mediados de siglo XX. Aunque recientemente se ha comenzado a investigar sobre Cruiskeen Lawn con cierta seriedad, uno de los aspectos que muchos críticos han pasado por alto es la cuestión de la política irlandesa. Brian O’Nolan fue un observador directo de los muchos cambios sociales, culturales y políticos que sufrió la Irlanda de la época: desde la creación del Estado Libre Irlandés en 1922 hasta la época de expansión económica de los 60, pasando por el periodo de La Emergencia (1939-45) y los años de estancamiento ecónomico e inmigración pronunciada (1945-54). Por todo ello, Cruiskeen Lawn se convirtió en un espacio de conversación y de comentario político sobre todos los aspectos de la política irlandesa, desde las intervenciones internacionales del país hasta acontecimientos locales de naturaleza trivial. Siendo consciente de la importancia histórica de veintiséis años de comentarios políticos por parte de una figura intelectual reconocida como O’Nolan, la presente tesis doctoral examina el total de 4.032 artículos que componen la columna con dos objetivos principales: primero, entender Cruiskeen Lawn como una obra de comentario político, así como un retrato preciso de la Irlanda de mediados del siglo XX; y segundo, aventurar la filosofía política del propio O’Nolan a través de una lectura detallada de sus opiniones acerca de los eventos políticos que se discuten en este estudio