Teleseminar on Electronic Commerce

Introductory Week: 24.-28.9.2001 in Nice

Digital Image Watermarking

Claudia Schremmer
University of Mannheim /
Germany
September 2001

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Overview

1. Introduction
2. Digital Watermarking
3. Attacks
4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch
5. Conclusion

Overview

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Prelude

Prelude

Page from a prayer

book showing the
baking of unleavened
bread (15th century)
from the Illuminated
Haggadah Exhibit.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

1. Introduction
In former times...
Traditional content media yield degraded content when
copied:

1. Introduction

paper documents,
analogue recordings,
celluloid film,
canvas paintings, and
marble sculptures

Or they require expensive and specialized equipment to

produce high-quality copies.
Thus, the technical burden on traditional content creators
for protecting their material has been minimal.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Nowadays...

1. Introduction

High quality (even: identical) copies are easy to produce.

There is apparently no limit to the value that can be
added by creating and providing access to digital content.
Creators and owners of (digital) content need ways to
protect their property rights in the increasingly digital
world.
Distributors and recipients of content need ways to fully
utilize the rich potential of their digital assets.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Example

1. Introduction

Is this photo original?

Is it fake / has it been
modified?
Who owns the right?
Are we allowed to use this
photo in our seminar?

Robbie Williams

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Definition
Aspect of
Security

Description

Example

Access Control

Control of access to
a system and
limitations to system
functions and data
Proof of identity of
the author and
genuineness of a
document
Ensures that
unauthorized users
cannot access data
Proof that the data
are unaltered

Firewall

Protects intellectual
property

Digital
Watermarks

Authentification

1. Introduction

Confidentiality

Integrity
Copyright

Digital
signature,
digital
watermarks
Encryption

Digital
signature

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

2. Digital Watermarking

2. Digital Watermarking

Digital watermarks are fixed to the underlying data.

In contrast to the traditional way of watermarking paper or
money, digital watermarks rely on steganography:
A digital watermark is included into a digital medium
the way that the user does not perceive it.

Thus, the communication is secret.

Two ways of secret communication:
The copyright information is transferred via a secret key while the
algorithm is known. Thus, only the user can access the
information.
No secret key exists, but the algorithm is kept secret.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Practical Approach

Substitutional steganography:
A noisy component of the digital message is substituted by an
encrypted secret message.

2. Digital Watermarking

Constructive steganography:
The secret message is not included by means of replacement, but
by means of reproduction of noisy signals, based on the model of
the original noise.

Existing watermarking algorithms are based on the

substitutional steganography.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Types of watermarks

2. Digital Watermarking

Subdivision of unperceptible (steganographic)

watermarks:
Unperceptible robust: Insertion of hidden information, copyright
information, authentification, and meta information.
Based on a modification of the pixel (for an image), example:
modification of an amplitude in the blue channel.
Or based on a modification in the frequency domain, example: after
DCT or wavelet transformation.

Unperceptible fragile: Aim to proof the integrity of a document.

They are destroyed on purpose in order to detect manipulation.
Based on content related algorithms like the digital signature.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

3. Attacks: unintentional

There are a number of unintentional and intentional

attacks:
Unintentional attacks:

3. Attacks

Image: compression, transcoding, printing/scanning, filtering,

noise, geometric transforms, cropping, compositing/mosaicing,...
Video: AD/DA conversion, compression, transcoding, text/logo
insertion, geometric transformations, jitter, cropping,...

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Attacks: intentional
Intentional attacks:

3. Attacks

watermark removal/interference:
denoising, compression, quantization, remodulation, blurring,
averaging,...
Desynchronization (detector disabling):
cropping, affine and projective transforms, jittering, mosaicing,
collage,...
Cryptographic:
key determination (brute force), Oracle attack (i.e., generate
unmarked data by trial and error)
Protocol:
copy attack, printing/rescanning,...

Watermark research must include work on attacks!

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Example (I)

3. Attacks

original

original

wavelet compr.94%

crumple & scan

warp

mosaic

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3. Attacks

Example (II)

composition of wavelet compressed house and warped bear

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Constraints
visibility

3. Attacks

capacity

robustness

Human visual perception shall not be disturbed by the

watermarks.
The capacity for watermarks differs according to the
number of bits allocated.
Robustness regards the performance towards intentional
and unintentional attacks.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch
Jian Zhao and Eckhard Koch:
Embedding robust labels into images for copyright
protection.
In: Proc. of the International Congress on Intellectual
Property Rights for Specialized Information, Knowledge
and New Technologies. Vienna, Austria, August 1995.
http://www.mediasec.com/know/papers.html

This is the initial paper which initialized a whole new

research area.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

Outline of the Zhao/Koch Algorithm

The paper of Zhao/Koch describes a pool of novel
steganographic methods for secure and robust
insertion of watermarks into digital images. The
included watermark is neither detectable, nor
movable/relocatable, nor changeable. Furthermore, it
survives attacks which do not strongly the image
quality, such as lossless compression, low pass filtering
(i.e., smoothing) and transcoding.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Fundamentals (I)

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

System for Copyright Protection: SysCoP

The system supports gray value, color, and binary
images.
Image Data
(y)
User Key (Uk)

Position
Sequence
Generator
Ts(y, Uk)

Position Sequence
(PS)

Label
Embeddin
g System

Labelled Image
(y)

Label Code
(C)

write a watermark

Two steps to write a watermark:

Generation of a pseudo-random sequence of positions in order
to select DCT-encoded blocks in which the code is embedded.
Here, this step is accomplished by the function Ts ( y, U k )
Embedding of the code into the block selected by the sequence
of positions.
Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Fundamentals (II)

Image Data
(y)

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

User Key (Uk)

Position
Sequence
Generator
Ts(y, Uk)

Position Sequence
(PS)

Label
Retrieval
System

Embedded Code
(C)

read a watermark

The reading process reverses the writing process:

Reading the code from the block selected by the sequence of
positions.
Retrieve the label inserted.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Remarks

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

In the following: consideration of gray value images

only.
A block is of size 8x8 pixels. It can be contiguous or
distributed.
A contiguous block is a square part of an image.
A distributed block is a random agglomeration of 64 pixels of the
image.

It is difficult to determine an optimal function Ts ( y,U k ).

Therefore, only the width and the height of an image are
actually used to generate the block positions.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Framework(write)

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

The code C to be embedded is represented by its binary bit

sequence: C c0 , c1, ..., cn
i marks the current bit in the sequence
B is the set of blocks of which a block is randomly selected.
The initialization is: i=0, B={}.

Algorithm: Framework(write).
(1) If i n, return.
(2) Randomly select a block b, using the position sequence
generation function Ts(Uk, y).
(3) If b exists already in B, go to (2), otherwise add b to B.
(4) Call check_write(b, ci) to check weather b is a valid block: if
this function returns False, go to (2).
(5) Call write(b, ci) to embed a bit ci to the block b.
(6) Increment i, go to (1).

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Framework(read)

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

Algorithm: Framework(read).
(1) If i n, return.
(2) Randomly select a distributed or a contiguous 88 block b,
using the position sequence generation function Ts(Uk,y).
(3) If b exists already in B, then go to (2), otherwise add b to B.
(4) Call check_read(b, ci) to check weather b is a valid block: if
this function returns False, go to (2).
(5) Call read(b) to retrieve a bit from the block b.
(6) Increment i, and go to (1).

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

JPEG-based Code Insertion

In the framework, the following algorithms are still
undefined:

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

check_write(b, ci)
write(b, ci)
check_read(b, ci)
read(b, ci)

They depend on the coding format of the image. We

restrict our future considerations to JPEG-encoded
images:
Image preprocessor

Image
encoder

Pixel
DCT
Block

Quantization

Entropy
encoding:
run length
Huffman
arithmetic

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

Visual Perception

General idea: Insert watermarks in positions where the

human visual system does not or nearly not perceive a
modification of the coefficients.
Here: Insertion in the smooth background areas, i.e., in
the white areas of the right picture.
The coefficients concerned are of the middle
frequencies in the DCT-transformed domain.
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Possible Positions
l
2 3
0
2 3
1
9 10 11
2 16 17 18
3
4
5
6
7
0

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

Statistic and empirical research has defined possible

positions to include a code into a block.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

4. Algorithm of Zhao/Koch

Demonstration

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5. Conclusion
We have not...
... detailed any precise algorithm.
... discussed other media than images. For audio, this would e.g.
mean entering the field of research on human audible properties.
... discussed the various attacking algorithms like e.g.
STIRMARK.

5. Conclusion

We have...
... given an introduction and an overview on the purpose of digital
watermarking.
... outlined the challenge of creating a robust algorithms to
unintentional and intentional attacks.
... restricted our considerations on images.

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany

Information...

Claudia Schremmer
University of Mannheim, Germany
Department Praktische Informatik IV

Information...

http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/informatik/pi4
schremmer@informatik.uni-mannheim.de

Claudia Schremmer / University of Mannheim / Germany