Information Analysis for Steganography and Steganalysis in 3D Polygonal Meshes

Information hiding, which embeds a watermark/message over a cover signal, has recently found extensive applications in, for example, copyright protection, content authentication and covert communication. It has been widely considered as an appealing technology to complement conventional cryptographic processes in the field of multimedia security by embedding information into the signal being protected. Generally, information hiding can be classified into two categories: steganography and watermarking. While steganography attempts to embed as much information as possible into a cover signal, watermarking tries to emphasize the robustness of the embedded information at the expense of embedding capacity. In contrast to information hiding, steganalysis aims at detecting whether a given medium has hidden message in it, and, if possible, recover that hidden message. It can be used to measure the security performance of information hiding techniques, meaning a steganalysis resistant steganographic/watermarking method should be imperceptible not only to Human Vision Systems (HVS), but also to intelligent analysis. As yet, 3D information hiding and steganalysis has received relatively less attention compared to image information hiding, despite the proliferation of 3D computer graphics models which are fairly promising information carriers. This thesis focuses on this relatively neglected research area and has the following primary objectives: 1) to investigate the trade-off between embedding capacity and distortion by considering the correlation between spatial and normal/curvature noise in triangle meshes; 2) to design satisfactory 3D steganographic algorithms, taking into account this trade-off; 3) to design robust 3D watermarking algorithms; 4) to propose a steganalysis framework for detecting the existence of the hidden information in 3D models and introduce a universal 3D steganalytic method under this framework. %and demonstrate the performance of the proposed steganalysis by testing it against six well-known 3D steganographic/watermarking methods. The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 1 describes in detail the background relating to information hiding and steganalysis, as well as the research problems this thesis will be studying. Chapter 2 conducts a survey on the previous information hiding techniques for digital images, 3D models and other medium and also on image steganalysis algorithms. Motivated by the observation that the knowledge of the spatial accuracy of the mesh vertices does not easily translate into information related to the accuracy of other visually important mesh attributes such as normals, Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the impact of modifying vertex coordinates of 3D triangle models on the mesh normals. Chapter 3 presents the results of an empirical investigation, whereas Chapter 4 presents the results of a theoretical study. Based on these results, a high-capacity 3D steganographic algorithm capable of controlling embedding distortion is also presented in Chapter 4. In addition to normal information, several mesh interrogation, processing and rendering algorithms make direct or indirect use of curvature information. Motivated by this, Chapter 5 studies the relation between Discrete Gaussian Curvature (DGC) degradation and vertex coordinate modifications. Chapter 6 proposes a robust watermarking algorithm for 3D polygonal models, based on modifying the histogram of the distances from the model vertices to a point in 3D space. That point is determined by applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the cover model. The use of PCA makes the watermarking method robust against common 3D operations, such as rotation, translation and vertex reordering. In addition, Chapter 6 develops a 3D specific steganalytic algorithm to detect the existence of the hidden messages embedded by one well-known watermarking method. By contrast, the focus of Chapter 7 will be on developing a 3D watermarking algorithm that is resistant to mesh editing or deformation attacks that change the global shape of the mesh. By adopting a framework which has been successfully developed for image steganalysis, Chapter 8 designs a 3D steganalysis method to detect the existence of messages hidden in 3D models with existing steganographic and watermarking algorithms. The efficiency of this steganalytic algorithm has been evaluated on five state-of-the-art 3D watermarking/steganographic methods. Moreover, being a universal steganalytic algorithm can be used as a benchmark for measuring the anti-steganalysis performance of other existing and most importantly future watermarking/steganographic algorithms. Chapter 9 concludes this thesis and also suggests some potential directions for future work

Engineering non-Hermitian and topological flow of sound

During the last decades, acoustic and phononic metamaterial research was focused on finding new ways to modify the flow of sound waves at will. In this project, we focus on exploring novel properties of sound by developing numerical code and theoretical methods to understand the acoustic analogy to non-Hermitian systems, topological insulators, and other exciting phenomena in condensed matter physics such as the magic angle in twisted bilayer graphene. Succinctly, we wish to translate these common notions of quantum mechanics into classical acoustics to find new properties for the case of sound. Non-Hermitian acoustic structures can be achieved by balancing acoustic loss and gain units. Commonly known as Parity-Time (PT) symmetric structures, they have neither parity symmetry nor time-reversal symmetry, but are nevertheless symmetric in the product of both. In particular, the doctoral research project aims at designing acoustic PT symmetry and demonstrating the extraordinary scattering characteristics of the acoustic PT medium based on exact theoretical predictions and numerical analysis. Hence, we investigate the possibilities to realize one-way cloaks of invisibility and broken symmetry properties with amplifying or attenuating behaviour. Topological sound combines the knowledge of topology in mathematics and electronics with sound waves. Knowing that artificial sonic lattices have been widely used to explore topological phases of sound and its properties, we propose to study the properties of Second Order Topological Insulators when non-hermiticity is involved. Deriving a semi-numerical tool that allows us to compute the spectral dependence of corner states in the presence of defects, we illustrate the limits of the topological resilience of the confined non-Hermitian acoustic states. An attractive motivation of these acoustic structures compared to their electronic counterparts, is their easy fabrication and tunability, allowing the experimental verification of this quantum analogies as well as the development of many numerical studies. Thereby, in the last part of this thesis we mimic twisted bilayer physics in a mechanical twisted bilayer configuration and also in an acoustical bilayer. Designing the mathematical models to describe the physics involved, we show how the twist angle is related to the flat band formation as happens in twisted bilayer graphene.Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de Materiales por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Ramón Eulalio Zaera Polo.- Secretario: Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres.- Vocal: José Vicente Álvarez Carrer

Metamaterial

In-depth analysis of the theory, properties and description of the most potential technological applications of metamaterials for the realization of novel devices such as subwavelength lenses, invisibility cloaks, dipole and reflector antennas, high frequency telecommunications, new designs of bandpass filters, absorbers and concentrators of EM waves etc. In order to create a new devices it is necessary to know the main electrodynamical characteristics of metamaterial structures on the basis of which the device is supposed to be created. The electromagnetic wave scattering surfaces built with metamaterials are primarily based on the ability of metamaterials to control the surrounded electromagnetic fields by varying their permeability and permittivity characteristics. The book covers some solutions for microwave wavelength scales as well as exploitation of nanoscale EM wavelength such as visible specter using recent advances of nanotechnology, for instance in the field of nanowires, nanopolymers, carbon nanotubes and graphene. Metamaterial is suitable for scholars from extremely large scientific domain and therefore given to engineers, scientists, graduates and other interested professionals from photonics to nanoscience and from material science to antenna engineering as a comprehensive reference on this artificial materials of tomorrow

Nouvelles méthodes de synchronisation de nuages de points 3D pour l'insertion de données cachées

This thesis addresses issues relating to the protection of 3D object meshes. For instance, these objects can be created using CAD tool developed by the company STRATEGIES. In an industrial context, 3D meshes creators need to have tools in order to verify meshes integrity, or check permission for 3D printing for example.In this context we study data hiding on 3D meshes. This approach allows us to insert information in a secure and imperceptible way in a mesh. This may be an identifier, a meta-information or a third-party content, for instance, in order to transmit secretly a texture. Data hiding can address these problems by adjusting the trade-off between capacity, imperceptibility and robustness. Generally, data hiding methods consist of two stages, the synchronization and the embedding. The synchronization stage consists of finding and ordering available components for insertion. One of the main challenges is to propose an effective synchronization method that defines an order on mesh components. In our work, we propose to use mesh vertices, specifically their geometric representation in space, as basic components for synchronization and embedding. We present three new synchronisation methods based on the construction of a Hamiltonian path in a vertex cloud. Two of these methods jointly perform the synchronization stage and the embedding stage. This is possible thanks to two new high-capacity embedding methods (from 3 to 24 bits per vertex) that rely on coordinates quantization. In this work we also highlight the constraints of this kind of synchronization. We analyze the different approaches proposed with several experimental studies. Our work is assessed on various criteria including the capacity and imperceptibility of the embedding method. We also pay attention to security aspects of the proposed methods.Cette thèse aborde les problèmes liés à la protection de maillages d'objets 3D. Ces objets peuvent, par exemple, être créés à l'aide d'outil de CAD développés par la société STRATEGIES. Dans un cadre industriel, les créateurs de maillages 3D ont besoin de disposer d'outils leur permettant de vérifier l'intégrité des maillages, ou de vérifier des autorisations pour l'impression 3D par exemple. Dans ce contexte nous étudions l'insertion de données cachées dans des maillages 3D. Cette approche permet d'insérer de façon imperceptible et sécurisée de l'information dans un maillage. Il peut s'agir d'un identifiant, de méta-informations ou d'un contenu tiers, par exemple, pour transmettre de façon secrète une texture. L'insertion de données cachées permet de répondre à ces problèmes en jouant sur le compromis entre la capacité, l'imperceptibilité et la robustesse. Généralement, les méthodes d'insertion de données cachées se composent de deux phases, la synchronisation et l'insertion. La synchronisation consiste à trouver et ordonner les éléments disponibles pour l'insertion. L'un des principaux challenges est de proposer une méthode de synchronisation 3D efficace qui définit un ordre sur les composants des maillages. Dans nos travaux, nous proposons d'utiliser les sommets du maillage, plus précisément leur représentation géométrique dans l'espace comme composants de base pour la synchronisation et l'insertion. Nous présentons donc trois nouvelles méthodes de synchronisation de la géométrie des maillages basées sur la construction d'un chemin hamiltonien dans un nuage de sommets. Deux de ces méthodes permettent de manière conjointe de synchroniser les sommets et de cacher un message. Cela est possible grâce à deux nouvelles méthodes d'insertion haute capacité (de 3 à 24 bits par sommet) qui s'appuient sur la quantification des coordonnées. Dans ces travaux nous mettons également en évidence les contraintes propres à ce type de synchronisation. Nous discutons des différentes approches proposées dans plusieurs études expérimentales. Nos travaux sont évalués sur différents critères dont la capacité et l'imperceptibilité de la méthode d'insertion. Nous portons également notre attention aux aspects sécurité des méthodes

LIPIcs, Volume 248, ISAAC 2022, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 248, ISAAC 2022, Complete Volum

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Full Proceedings, 2018

Full conference proceedings for the 2018 International Building Physics Association Conference hosted at Syracuse University

Computer science: the hardware software and heart of IT

1st edition, 201