Local Geometric Distortions Resilient Watermarking Scheme Based on Symmetry

As an efficient watermark attack method, geometric distortions destroy the synchronization between watermark encoder and decoder. And the local geometric distortion is a famous challenge in the watermark field. Although a lot of geometric distortions resilient watermarking schemes have been proposed, few of them perform well against local geometric distortion like random bending attack (RBA). To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel watermark synchronization process and the corresponding watermarking scheme. In our scheme, the watermark bits are represented by random patterns. The message is encoded to get a watermark unit, and the watermark unit is flipped to generate a symmetrical watermark. Then the symmetrical watermark is embedded into the spatial domain of the host image in an additive way. In watermark extraction, we first get the theoretically mean-square error minimized estimation of the watermark. Then the auto-convolution function is applied to this estimation to detect the symmetry and get a watermark units map. According to this map, the watermark can be accurately synchronized, and then the extraction can be done. Experimental results demonstrate the excellent robustness of the proposed watermarking scheme to local geometric distortions, global geometric distortions, common image processing operations, and some kinds of combined attacks

Protecting Ownership Rights of Videos Against Digital Piracy: An Efficient Digital Watermarking Scheme

Violation of one’s intellectual ownership rights by the others is a common problem which entertainment industry frequently faces now-a-days. Sharing of information over social media platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and twitter without giving credit the owner causes huge financial losses to the owner and hence needs an immediate attention. Digital watermarking is a promising technique to protect owners’ right against digital piracy. Most of the state-of-the-art techniques does not provides adequate level of resilience against majority of video specific attacks and other commonly applied attacks. Therefore, this paper proposes a highly transparent and robust video watermarking solution to protect the owners rights by first convert each video frame into YCbCr color components and then select twenty five strongest speeded-up robust features (SURF) points of the normalized luminance component as points for both watermark embedding and extraction. After applying variety of geometric, simple signal processing and video specific attacks on the watermarked video meticulous analysis is performed using popular metrics which reveals that the proposed scheme possesses high correlation value which makes it superior for practical applications against these attacks. The scheme also proposes a novel three-level impairment scale for subjective analysis which gives stable results to derive correct conclusions

A Color Image Watermarking Scheme Resistant against Geometrical Attacks

The geometrical attacks are still a problem for many digital watermarking algorithms at present. In this paper, we propose a watermarking algorithm for color images resistant to geometrical distortions (rotation and scaling). The singular value decomposition is used for watermark embedding and extraction. The log-polar map- ping (LPM) and phase correlation method are used to register the position of geometrical distortion suffered by the watermarked image. Experiments with different kinds of color images and watermarks demonstrate that the watermarking algorithm is robust to common image processing attacks, especially geometrical attacks

A Robust Image Watermarking Based on Image Restoration Using SIFT

This paper introduces a novel robust watermarking scheme for digital images, which is robust against common signal processing and geometric distortion attacks. In order to be resistant to geometric distortion attacks, the matched feature points determined by the scale-invariance feature transform (SIFT) are used for image restoration to reduce the synchronization errors caused by geometric distortion attacks. An adaptive embedding scheme is applied in discrete Fourier transform (DFT) domain of each subimage. The watermark detection decision is based on the number of matched bits between the retrieved and original watermark in the embedding image blocks. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking is robust to common signal processing attacks and geometric distortion attacks, including rotation, scaling, cropping, shearing and some combined attacks

Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat. The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system: spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility. The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen

Digital Watermarking of Images towards Content Protection.

With the rapid growth of the internet and digital media techniques over the last decade, multimedia data such as images, video and audio can easily be copied, altered and distributed over the internet without any loss in quality. Therefore, protection of ownership of multimedia data has become a very significant and challenging issue. Three novel image watermarking algorithms have been designed and implemented for copyright protection. The first proposed algorithm is based on embedding multiple watermarks in the blue channel of colour images to achieve more robustness against attacks. The second proposed algorithm aims to achieve better trade-offs between imperceptibility and robustness requirements of a digital watermarking system. It embeds a watermark in adaptive manner via classification of DCT blocks with three levels: smooth, edges and texture, implemented in the DCT domain by analyzing the values of AC coefficients. The third algorithm aims to achieve robustness against geometric attacks, which can desynchronize the location of the watermark and hence cause incorrect watermark detection. It uses geometrically invariant feature points and image normalization to overcome the problem of synchronization errors caused by geometric attacks. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are robust and outperform related techniques found in literature

Invisible watermarking of digital signals

Cílem téhle práce je navrhnutí nových technik pro robustní neviditelné značení digitálních signálů. Nejdříve je prezentován současný stav tohoto odvětví a dostupné softwarové řešení. Poté následuje návrh několika algoritmů pro neviditelné značení, přičemž každý z nich je založen na jiném principu. Dále je připravena sada digitálních testovacích signálů společně s testovacím softwarem pro otestování navržených řešení a jejích porovnání s vybraným dostupným softwarem. Poté následuje srovnání naměřených výsledků, výkonu a jejích diskuze.The aim of this thesis is to propose new techniques for robust invisible watermarking of digital signals. Firstly, state of the art and existing available software solutions are discussed. Then, design of multiple algorithms for invisible watermarking follows, each based on different principle. In order to enable benchmarking, suitable digital signals dataset is prepared. Also, testing benchmark is introduced, empowering multiple known attacks. Each presented solution is then benchmarked, as well as the introduced existing available software solutions for invisible watermarking. Results are then compared and discussed.

Rank-based image watermarking method with high embedding capacity and robustness

This paper presents a novel rank-based method for image watermarking. In the watermark embedding process, the host image is divided into blocks, followed by the 2-D discrete cosine transform (DCT). For each image block, a secret key is employed to randomly select a set of DCT coefficients suitable for watermark embedding. Watermark bits are inserted into an image block by modifying the set of DCT coefficients using a rank-based embedding rule. In the watermark detection process, the corresponding detection matrices are formed from the received image using the secret key. Afterward, the watermark bits are extracted by checking the ranks of the detection matrices. Since the proposed watermarking method only uses two DCT coefficients to hide one watermark bit, it can achieve very high embedding capacity. Moreover, our method is free of host signal interference. This desired feature and the usage of an error buffer in watermark embedding result in high robustness against attacks. Theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method