Microphone smart device fingerprinting from video recordings

This report aims at summarizing the on-going research activity carried out by DG-JRC in the framework of the institutional project Authors and Victims Identification of Child Abuse on-line, concerning the use of microphone fingerprinting for source device classification. Starting from an exhaustive study of the State of Art regarding the matter, this report describes a feasibility study about the adoption of microphone fingerprinting for source identification of video recordings. A set of operational scenarios have been established in collaboration with EUROPOL law enforcers, according to investigators needs. A critical analysis of the obtained results has demonstrated the feasibility of microphone fingerprinting and it has suggested a set of recommendations, both in terms of usability and future researches in the field.JRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

FaceQnet: Quality Assessment for Face Recognition based on Deep Learning

In this paper we develop a Quality Assessment approach for face recognition based on deep learning. The method consists of a Convolutional Neural Network, FaceQnet, that is used to predict the suitability of a specific input image for face recognition purposes. The training of FaceQnet is done using the VGGFace2 database. We employ the BioLab-ICAO framework for labeling the VGGFace2 images with quality information related to their ICAO compliance level. The groundtruth quality labels are obtained using FaceNet to generate comparison scores. We employ the groundtruth data to fine-tune a ResNet-based CNN, making it capable of returning a numerical quality measure for each input image. Finally, we verify if the FaceQnet scores are suitable to predict the expected performance when employing a specific image for face recognition with a COTS face recognition system. Several conclusions can be drawn from this work, most notably: 1) we managed to employ an existing ICAO compliance framework and a pretrained CNN to automatically label data with quality information, 2) we trained FaceQnet for quality estimation by fine-tuning a pre-trained face recognition network (ResNet-50), and 3) we have shown that the predictions from FaceQnet are highly correlated with the face recognition accuracy of a state-of-the-art commercial system not used during development. FaceQnet is publicly available in GitHub.Comment: Preprint version of a paper accepted at ICB 201

Fighting child sexual abuse: prevention policies for offenders.

Sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children constitute major violation of fundamental rights and in particular of children rights to protection and care necessary for their well-being, as it is stated in the UNHCR Convention on the Rights of the Child. A series of Union initiatives and in particular Directive 2011/93/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography aim at supporting actively and on a coordinated way the implementation of prevention and repression policies. The aim of this research is to first map existing prevention programmes in the European Union and at International level, focusing on interventions and treatments for (potential) offenders before any abuse occurs, for convicted offenders in prisons, and for convicted offenders after they leave the prison to fights against recidivism. Preventing campaigns and programs, helplines, circles of aids in the International and European landscape are listed and referenced. The effectiveness of those approaches have not yet be fully demonstrated and presented. Nevertheless, the report also offers preliminary evaluations of the reported initiatives and highlights on the possible best practices. In addition, criteria for more thorough assessment are suggested. Those prevention programmes shall be considered as an important contribution for a resilient and effective approach to fight against child sexual exploitation both in the cyberspace and offline, and to raise main stakeholders’ awareness to the issueJRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Biometric Spoofing: A JRC Case Study in 3D Face Recognition

Based on newly available and affordable off-the-shelf 3D sensing, processing and printing technologies, the JRC has conducted a comprehensive study on the feasibility of spoofing 3D and 2.5D face recognition systems with low-cost self-manufactured models and presents in this report a systematic and rigorous evaluation of the real risk posed by such attacking approach which has been complemented by a test campaign. The work accomplished and presented in this report, covers theories, methodologies, state of the art techniques, evaluation databases and also aims at providing an outlook into the future of this extremely active field of research.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Automatic fingerprint recognition: from children to elderly Ageing and age effects

By courtesy of the Portuguese Government, DG JRC has received a comprehensive set of fingerprint data from individuals aged 0-25 and 65-98. The main purpose of the proposed experiments is to deepen the understanding regarding the physiological development of the fingertip ridge structure over time and its impact on automated fingerprint recognition. The experiments explore three biometric processes in the light of age, ageing and growth effects. These effects are demonstrated and validated. A growth model is also developed and validated. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for enhanced implementation of automated fingerprint recognition system and suggestions for further researches.JRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Building a hybrid experimental platform for mobile botnet research

Mobile botnets are an emerging security threat that aims at exploiting the wide penetration of mobile devices and systems and their vulnerabilities in the same spirit of traditional botnets. Mobile botmasters take advantage of infected mobile devices and issue command and control operations on them to extract personal information, cause denial of service or gain financially. To date, research on countering such attacks or studying their effects has been conducted in a sporadic manner that hinders the repetition of experiments and thus limits their validity. We present here our work on a hybrid experimental platform for mobile botnets that supports the execution and monitoring of related scenarios concerning their infection, attack vectors, propagation, etc. The platform is based on principles of flexibility, extensibility and facilitates the setup of scalable experiments utilising both real and emulated mobile systems. We also discuss a novel method of estimating the active bot population in a botnet and illustrate its deployment on the experimental platform.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Camera fingerprinting based on Sensor Pattern Noise as a tool for combating Child Abuse on-line. Project AVICAO - Authors and Victims Identification of Child Abuse On-line

This document presents findings and outcomes of the JRC research activity on camera fingerprinting techniques, as a possible aid to enhance European Law Enforcement bodies’ capability to fight against Child Abuse on-line. The activity has been conducted in the framework of the institutional project Authors and Victims Identification of Child Abuse On-Line (560-AVICAO), started in 2014, and has been carried out in close and fruitful cooperation with EUROPOL’s European Cyber-Crime Centre (EC3).JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

Privacy, tomorrow's Information Bottleneck?

Abstract not availableJRC.J-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (Seville

A generic framework to support participatory surveillance through crowdsensing

Harnessing the power and popularity of participatory or opportunistic sensing for the purpose of providing added value security and surveillance services is a promising research direction. However, challenges such as increased privacy concerns, as well as technological issues related to the reliable processing and meaningful analysis of the collected data, hinder the widespread deployment of participatory surveillance applications. We present here our work on addressing some of the aforementioned concerns through our related participatory application that focuses on crisis management and in particular buildings' evacuation. We discuss the technical aspects of our work, the viability and practicality of which is validated by means of a real experiment comprising 14 users in the context of an emergency evacuation exercise.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit