Geometric attacks on image watermarking systems

Synchronization errors can lead to significant performance loss in image watermarking methods, as the geometric attacks in the Stirmark benchmark software show. The authors describe the most common types of geometric attacks and survey proposed solutions.     

Region-based image watermarking

We introduce a novel method for embedding and detecting a chaotic watermark in the digital spatial image domain, based on segmenting the image and locating regions that are robust to several image manipulations. The robustness of the method is confirmed by experimental results that display the immunity of the embedded watermark to several kinds of attacks, such as compression, filtering, scaling, cropping, and rotation.     

False-positive-free SVD-based image watermarking

The need of copyright protection and rightful ownership become very urgent in the fast growing Internet environment. The watermarking offers a convenient way to hide specific information via an imaging system for the consumer electronic devices such as digital camera, scanner, and printer. Numerous efforts have been devoted in the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)-based image watermarking schemes which embed the visual watermark image into the host image before publishing for public usage. However, the main drawback of the SVD-based image watermarking is its false positive problem of which an attacker can easily claim and obtain the correct watermark from an unauthorized image. In this paper, we proposed a new SVD-based image watermarking by embedding the principal component of a watermark into the host image of block based manner using spread spectrum concept. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method overcomes the false positive problem, achieves a high payload, and outperforms the former reliable SVD-based watermarking.     

Contourlet-based image adaptive watermarking

In the contourlet transform (CT), the Laplacian pyramid (LP) decomposes an image into a low-frequency (LF) subband and a high-frequency (HF) subband. The LF subband is created by filtering the original image with 2-D low-pass filter. However, the HF subband is created by subtracting the synthesized LF subband from the original image but not by 2-D high-pass filtering the original image. In this paper, we propose a contourlet-based image adaptive watermarking (CIAW) scheme, in which the watermark is embedded into the contourlet coefficients of the largest detail subbands of the image. The transform structure of the LP makes the embedded watermark spread out into all subbands likely in which the LF subbands are included when we reconstruct the watermarked image based on the watermarked contourlet coefficients. Since both the LF subbands and the HF subbands contain watermarking components, our watermarking scheme is expected to be robust against both the LF image processing and the HF image processing attacks. The corresponding watermarking detection algorithm is proposed to decide whether the watermark is present or not by exploiting the unique transform structure of LP. With the new proposed concept of spread watermark, the watermark is detected by computing the correlation between the spread watermark and the watermarked image in all contourlet subbands fully. The proposed CIAW scheme is particularly superior to the conventional watermarking schemes when the watermarked image is attacked by some image processing methods, which destroy the HF subbands, thanks to the watermarking components preserved in the LF subbands. Experimental results show the validity of CIAW in terms of both the watermarking invisibility and the watermarking robustness. In addition, the comparison experiments prove the high-efficiency of CIAW again.     

一种基于量化的图像水印方案

本文提出一种图像自适应的扩频水印方案，利用量化-替换过程将水印嵌到图像DCT域的中高频系数上，为保证水印的鲁棒性和透明性，根据视觉模型自适应地确定水印的量化区间，在水印检测时不需要参考原图。对水印图像的攻击实验表明：算法对噪声干扰及常见的图像处理技术具有较好的鲁棒性。     

基于DCT域的图像数字水印技术

采用了DCT离散余弦变换的算法，对图像这种多媒体数字作品进行了数字水印的嵌入和检测研究。并且使用了MATLAB来介绍了一种DCT域的图像数字水印嵌入和提取的实例，在最后对嵌入水印的图像进行了攻击实验，验证了该算法的鲁棒性和不可见性。     

VQ-based digital image watermarking method

A vector-quantisation (VQ)-based watermarking method is presented which utilises the codebook expansion technique. This method is efficient, provides enhanced security and the watermarked image is robust against the effects of VQ compression. Moreover, the watermark extraction can be performed without the original image. Experimental results are presented which demonstrate the effectiveness of this algorithm.     

一种新的基于图像内容特征的顽健水印

使用混沌映射将二进制商标的像素在空间区域中进行随机置乱,然后将置乱的信息分块嵌入在图像的DCT变换系数中。为了使水印的分布集中在图像显著的边缘特征中,提出了基于图像内容的模糊熵测度算法,水印嵌入的强度随着图像特征变化而自适应地变化。在水印的检测中,利用Kalman滤波算法对水印信息进行预测和估计,在没有原始图像数据的情况下,能够使嵌入的商标得到恢复以表明数字图像的版权。实验结果表明,所提出的方案,对于水印的嵌入及提取具有很好的效果,可作为可靠的版权保护工具而应用。     

具有几何不变性的图像复制-粘贴盲鉴别算法

提出一种具有几何不变性的复制-粘贴盲鉴别算法.该算法首先定义灰度级别和灰度结构,根据像素的灰度级别划分图像块,再结合其灰度结构定位可疑块对;然后对每一组可疑块对进行基于对数极坐标变换的相位相关,并粗略定位篡改区域;最后,精确计算篡改区域之间的旋转角度、缩放尺度及平移量,从而定位复制-粘贴区域.实验结果表明,该算法不但具有旋转、缩放等几何不变性,而且具有较高检测效率及较强的鲁棒性.     

Robust image watermarking using non-regular wavelets

An approach to watermarking digital images using non-regular wavelets is advanced. Non-regular transforms spread the energy in the transform domain. The proposed method leads at the same time to increased image quality and increased robustness with respect to lossy compression. The approach provides robust watermarking by suitably creating watermarked messages that have energy compaction and frequency spreading. Our experimental results show that the application of non-regular wavelets, instead of regular ones, can furnish a superior robust watermarking scheme. The generated watermarked data is more immune against non-intentional JPEG and JPEG2000 attacks.     

一种半脆弱性数字图像水印算法

本文基于JPEG有损压缩提出了一种半脆弱性数字图像水印算法。实验测试表明,所提出的算法不会明显影响图像的主客观质量,对JPEG有损压缩具有一定的顽健性,可以有效地进行篡改检测,达到检测和标示图像内容真实性的目的。     

Filter evaluation for DWT-domain image watermarking

Similar to other wavelet-based image processing algorithms, the choice of wavelet filters generally affects the performance of a wavelet-based watermarking system. Reported is an evaluation of a set of biorthogonal integer wavelets under a multiresolution-watermarking framework. Further investigation is conducted to justify the robustness performance against attacks.     

抗攻击的图像水印技术综述

文章简要地探讨了抗各种攻击图像水印技术,包括一些基本概念:水印概念、水印的嵌入和提取过程、水印的分类和衡量水印的基本指标.文章把几何攻击分为图像变换攻击和剪裁攻击,图像处理攻击分为噪声攻击、滤波攻击、JPEG攻击和打印扫描拍照攻击.此外,文章探讨了图像水印抗击几何攻击和抗图像处理攻击从传统到最新的技术和方法.     

Fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication

A simple fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication is proposed. The insertion of a binary watermark is accomplished by replacing the least significant bit of the host image with a random binary image obtained by random permutations and suitable XOR operations among bitplanes. The proposed scheme is secure, fast, and capable of detecting and localising modification, and is immune of the well-known quantisation attack.     

Wavelet based image adaptive watermarking scheme

An image adaptive watermark casting method based on the wavelet transform is proposed. To increase the robustness and perceptual invisibility, the algorithm is combined with the quantisation model based on the human visual system. The number of factors that affect the noise sensitivity of the human eye are taken into consideration. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness of the algorithm to high compression environments     

Digital image watermarking employing codebook in vector quantisation

Two simple watermarking techniques for a digital image are proposed. The methods employ a codebook in vector quantisation, and can extract watermark information from a watermarked image without an original image. Simulation results show that when the codebook of a larger size is used, a reconstructed image with a watermark has better quality than that without a watermark, and, for one of the proposed methods, a watermark size and the percentage of 0 bit contained in a watermark have almost no effect on PSNR for a reconstructed image.     

Tchebichef矩在图像数字水印技术中的应用

提出了一种利用原始图像的Tchebichef矩来增加水印顽健性的方法,即利用原始图像的一个或多个Tchebichef矩的值来估计水印图像所经过的几何变换的参数以及图像增强等图像处理操作的参数,并将这一过程作为水印检测的预处理过程。实验中将多种不同的水印信息在不同的图像处理域(包括DWT、DCT、FFT以及空间域等)实现水印信息的嵌入。为了检测这种估计算法的顽健性,本文实验中的几何攻击是由Stirmark产生的。计算机模拟实验证明这种估计方法简单,估计精度很高,增加了图像水印技术对几何攻击的顽健性,而且可在任何处理域中实现,具有很好的实用价值。1     

Quantized based image watermarking in an independent domain

This paper presents a performance study for two well known quantized based watermarking schemes Scalar Costa Scheme (SCS), and Trellis Coded Quantization scheme (TCQ) in an independent domain. For our study, the independent domain is obtained by the combination of the cited schemes with Independent Component Analysis (ICA). The Independent Component Analysis is used while inserting and extracting the message. Thus a performance compromise improvement of the original SCS and TCQ schemes in terms of robustness, capacity, and security is shown. Then the obtained schemes performances are compared to the Spread Transform (ST) based scheme well known for its proven good robustness properties. Our results show that, using watermarking with side information in independent domain permits to improve the global SCS and TCQ schemes performances. For example, in the case of SCS, by studying the Bit Error Rate (BER) in function of the watermark to noise ratio (WNR), the robustness has been improved by 20 dB (1 decade) when WNR is equal to 0 dB. Moreover, the capacity study shows for the same WNR=0 dB, the amount of information to be transmitted without error for a given noise level of the proposed SCS combined with ICA scheme (SCS-ICA) is much higher than that of the existing schemes. Finally, the study of the probability density functions (PDF) of the original and marked signals has shown that the Cachin-security level of the TCQ in an independent domain scheme (TCQ-ICA) is the best one compared to the other known schemes.     

Hierarchical watermarking for secure image authentication withlocalization

Several fragile watermarking schemes presented in the literature are either vulnerable to vector quantization (VQ) counterfeiting attacks or sacrifice localization accuracy to improve security. Using a hierarchical structure, we propose a method that thwarts the VQ attack while sustaining the superior localization properties of blockwise independent watermarking methods. In particular, we propose dividing the image into blocks in a multilevel hierarchy and calculating block signatures in this hierarchy. While signatures of small blocks on the lowest level of the hierarchy ensure superior accuracy of tamper localization, higher level block signatures provide increasing resistance to VQ attacks. At the top level, a signature calculated using the whole image completely thwarts the counterfeiting attack. Moreover, "sliding window" searches through the hierarchy enable the verification of untampered regions after an image has been cropped. We provide experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.     

Gray-scale image watermarking using GA-BPN hybrid network

In this paper, a novel watermarking scheme is proposed by embedding a binary watermark into gray-scale images using a hybrid GA-BPN intelligent network. HVS characteristics of the images in DCT domain are used to obtain a sequence of weighting factor from a GA-BPN. This weighting factor is used to embed and extract the watermark from the image in DWT domain. The GA-BPN is trained by 27 inference rules that includes three input HVS parameters namely luminance sensitivity, edge sensitivity computed using threshold and contrast sensitivity computed using variance. The robustness of the embedding scheme is examined by executing seven different image processing attacks. Visual quality of signed images before and after the attacks is examined by PSNR. The extracted watermarks from signed and attacked images show a high degree of similarity with the embedded content. Overall, the algorithm is robust against selected attacks and is well optimized.