A novel multipurpose watermarking scheme capable of protecting and authenticating images with tamper detection and localisation abilities

Technologies that fall under the umbrella of Industry 4.0 can be classified into one of its four significant components: cyber-physical systems, the internet of things (IoT), on-demand availability of computer system resources, and cognitive computing. The success of this industrial revolution lies in how well these components can communicate with each other, and work together in finding the most optimised solution for an assigned task. It is achieved by sharing data collected from a network of sensors. This data is communicated via images, videos, and a variety of other signals, attracting unwanted attention of hackers. The protection of such data is therefore pivotal, as is maintaining its integrity. To this end, this paper proposes a novel image watermarking scheme with potential applications in Industry 4.0. The strategy presented is multipurpose; one such purpose is authenticating the transmitted image, another is curtailing the illegal distribution of the image by providing copyright protection. To this end, two new watermarking methods are introduced, one of which is for embedding the robust watermark, and the other is related to the fragile watermark. The robust watermark's embedding is achieved in the frequency domain, wherein the frequency coefficients are selected using a novel mean-based coefficient selection procedure. Subsequently, the selected coefficients are manipulated in equal proportion to embed the robust watermark. The fragile watermark's embedding is achieved in the spatial domain, wherein self-generated fragile watermark(s) is embedded by directly altering the pixel bits of the host image. The effective combination of two domains results in a hybrid scheme and attains the vital balance between the watermarking requirements of imperceptibility, security and capacity. Moreover, in the case of tampering, the proposed scheme not only authenticates and provides copyright protection to images but can also detect tampering and localise the tampered regions. An extensive evaluation of the proposed scheme on typical images has proven its superiority over existing state-of-the-art methods

The Most Common Characteristics of Fragile Video Watermarking: A Review

The progress of network and multimedia technologies has been phenomenal during the previous two decades. Unauthorized users will be able to copy, retransmit, modify reproduction, and upload the contents more easily as a result of this innovation. Malicious attackers are quite concerned about the development and widespread use of digital video. Digital watermarking technology gives solutions to the aforementioned problems. Watermarking methods can alleviate these issues by embedding a secret watermark in the original host data, allowing the genuine user or file owner to identify any manipulation. In this study, lots of papers have been analyzed and studied carefully, in the period 2011–2022. The historical basis of the subject should not be forgotten so studying old research will give a clear idea of the topic. To aid future researchers in this subject, we give a review of fragile watermarking approaches and some related papers presented in recent years. This paper presents a comparison of many relevant works in this field based on some of the outcomes and improvements gained in these studies, which focuses on the common characteristics that increase the effect of watermarking techniques such as invisibility, tamper detection, recovery, and security &nbsp

Digital watermarking : applicability for developing trust in medical imaging workflows state of the art review

Medical images can be intentionally or unintentionally manipulated both within the secure medical system environment and outside, as images are viewed, extracted and transmitted. Many organisations have invested heavily in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), which are intended to facilitate data security. However, it is common for images, and records, to be extracted from these for a wide range of accepted practices, such as external second opinion, transmission to another care provider, patient data request, etc. Therefore, confirming trust within medical imaging workflows has become essential. Digital watermarking has been recognised as a promising approach for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of medical images. Authenticity refers to the ability to identify the information origin and prove that the data relates to the right patient. Integrity means the capacity to ensure that the information has not been altered without authorisation. This paper presents a survey of medical images watermarking and offers an evident scene for concerned researchers by analysing the robustness and limitations of various existing approaches. This includes studying the security levels of medical images within PACS system, clarifying the requirements of medical images watermarking and defining the purposes of watermarking approaches when applied to medical images

A dual watermarking scheme for identity protection

A novel dual watermarking scheme with potential applications in identity protection, media integrity maintenance and copyright protection in both electronic and printed media is presented. The proposed watermarking scheme uses the owner’s signature and fingerprint as watermarks through which the ownership and validity of the media can be proven and kept intact. To begin with, the proposed watermarking scheme is implemented on continuous-tone/greyscale images, and later extended to images achieved via multitoning, an advanced version of halftoning-based printing. The proposed watermark embedding is robust and imperceptible. Experimental simulations and evaluations of the proposed method show excellent results from both objective and subjective view-points

A single watermark based scheme for both protection and authentication of identities

The security of a watermarking scheme is mainly categorised as either robust or fragile. The former can withstand an authorised alteration/attack, primarily used in copyright protection. The latter follows a zero tolerance towards any modification, used primarily in content authentication processes. The existing literature in the field projects that two separate watermarks are required to make a watermarking scheme robust and fragile, thus making the overall process cumbersome and complex. A novel image watermarking scheme that uses only one watermark while achieving both goals of copyright protection and authentication of identities is presented. An unconventional concept of checkpointing is introduced, which equips the proposed scheme to be either robust or fragile, making it superior in its application versatility. First, watermark embedding within the host/original image is achieved by a combination of transform domain techniques along with a novel median-based embedding block selection procedure. Second, checkpointing is performed in the spatial domain. The watermarked image in the absence of an attack is correlated to the one that is being attacked, using the template energy comparison-based approach. In the case of the robust watermark, such checkpointing can establish whether the carried out attack is authorised or not, determining the successful recovery of the watermark or vice-versa. Moreover, in the case of the fragile watermark, a sole confirmation of the occurrence of an attack is sufficient to make the watermark recovery impossible. Finally, the experimental analysis of the proposed scheme illustrates its excellent performance and superiority over state-of-the-art methods within the field

Frame-synchronous Blind Audio Watermarking for Tamper Proofing and Self-Recovery

This paper presents a lifting wavelet transform (LWT)-based blind audio watermarking scheme designed for tampering detection and self-recovery. Following 3-level LWT decomposition of a host audio, the coefficients in selected subbands are first partitioned into frames for watermarking. To suit different purposes of the watermarking applications, binary information is packed into two groups: frame-related data are embedded in the approximation subband using rational dither modulation; the source-channel coded bit sequence of the host audio is hidden inside the 2nd and 3rd -detail subbands using 2N-ary adaptive quantization index modulation. The frame-related data consists of a synchronization code used for frame alignment and a composite message gathered from four adjacent frames for content authentication. To endow the proposed watermarking scheme with a self-recovering capability, we resort to hashing comparison to identify tampered frames and adopt a Reed–Solomon code to correct symbol errors. The experiment results indicate that the proposed watermarking scheme can accurately locate and recover the tampered regions of the audio signal. The incorporation of the frame synchronization mechanism enables the proposed scheme to resist against cropping and replacement attacks, all of which were unsolvable by previous watermarking schemes. Furthermore, as revealed by the perceptual evaluation of audio quality measures, the quality degradation caused by watermark embedding is merely minor. With all the aforementioned merits, the proposed scheme can find various applications for ownership protection and content authentication

Developing anti-counterfeiting measures: the role of smart packaging

Counterfeiting of food and beverage products is rife and premium brands are often targeted by fraudsters. Such is the case with Scotch whisky, a global, reputable brand revered for its heritage and tradition. Using Scotch whisky as a case study, the aim of this paper is to review existing literature and industry information to determine the market and personal consequences of counterfeiting activities and consider the packaging related anti-counterfeiting measures that can be employed within a wider anti-counterfeiting strategy. A typology of counterfeiting activities is developed including: tear- down counterfeiting, product overruns, malicious activities and document counterfeiting. Anti-counterfeiting measures are used to deter, detect and control counterfeiting activities and different packaging related approaches include the use of smart covert and overt technology. Most smart packaging-related anti-counterfeit technologies are stand-alone systems and this presents a vulnerability. An integrated anti-counterfeiting measures strategy, employed by business, the supply chain and the government is required to reduce the risk of the sale of counterfeit food and beverage products

Paperless Transfer of Medical Images: Storing Patient Data in Medical Images

Medical images have become an integral part ofpatient diagnosis in recent years. With the introduction of HealthInformation Management Systems (HIMS) used for the storageand sharing of patient data, as well as the use of the PictureArchiving and Communication Systems (PACS) formanipulating and storage of CT Scans, X-rays, MRIs and othermedical images, the security of patient data has become a seriousconcern for medical professionals. The secure transfer of theseimages along with patient data is necessary for maintainingconfidentiality as required by the Data Protection Act, 2011 inTrinidad and Tobago and similar legislation worldwide. Tofacilitate this secure transfer, different digital watermarking andsteganography techniques have been proposed to safely hideinformation in these digital images. This paper focuses on theamount of data that can be embedded into typical medical imageswithout compromising visual quality. In addition, ExploitingModification Direction (EMD) is selected as the method of choicefor hiding information in medical images and it is compared tothe commonly used Least Significant Bit (LSB) method.Preliminary results show that by using EMD there little to nodistortion even at the highest embedding capacity

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