Information System Security

AABFS-Jordan
Summer 2006

Watermarking

Presented To: Dr. Lo'ai Tawalbeh

Prepared By: Sami Qawasmeh
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Outline

Information Hiding overview

Introduction: History , Definition, and Motivation
Watermarking Classification : Paper and Digital WM
Desired Properties of Watermark
Digital Watermarking Types
Watermarking Process Embedding and Extraction.
Watermarking Techniques
Watermarking Attackers and Attacks
Limitations and Conclusions
Future Researches
References

What is Information Hiding?

Classical: Embedding information so that it

cannot be visually perceived

Modern : Embedding information in digital data so

that it cannot be visually or audibly perceived

Why Hide Information?

There are two major issues
Because you want to protect it from malicious use

protect intellectual property rights(IPR)

Because you do not want any one to even know

about its existence

Avoid observation by unintended recipients

Security through obscurity
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Information Hiding Main Disciplines

Steganography- (covered writing) the process of

secretly embedding information into a data source

in such a way its very existence is concealed.
Watermarking:

Definitions
Watermark : is a secret message that is

embedded into a cover message.

Digital watermark: is a visible or perfectly invisible,

identification code that is permanently embedded in

the data and remains present within the data after
any decryption process.

History
The Italians where the 1st to use watermarks in the

manufacture of paper in the 1270's.

A watermark was used in banknote production by the

Bank of England in 1697.

It is a good security feature because the watermark
cannot be photocopied or scanned effectively.

Why Watermark? Motivation (1/2)

The rapid revolution in digital multimedia and the ease of

generating identical and unauthorized digital data.

For example: USA Today, Jan. 2000: Estimated lost
revenue from digital audio piracy $8,5 billions

Digital objects can be copied and distributed, transmitted,

manipulated anonymously with no way to identify the

criminals.

Copyright protection of multimedia data

Copyright owners want to be compensated every time their

work is used.
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Why Watermark? Motivation (2/2)

The need to limit the number of copies created whereas

the watermarks are modified by the hardware and at

some point would not create any more copies (i.e. DVD)
- the reading device must be able to modify the watermark
Content protection content stamped with a visible

watermark that is very difficult to remove so that it can

be publicly and freely distributed

Watermarks Classification
1. Paper Watermark: Intended to be somewhat visible.

2. Digital Watermark: A digital signal or pattern imposed on

a digital document ( text, graphics, multimedia presentations ,

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Paper Watermark
The technique of impressing into the paper a form,
image, or text.
Cannot be photocopied or scanned effectively
Purpose: To make forgery more difficult to record
the manufacturers trademark, Copyright
protection, logos, ect
Used in :
Currency, Banknotes , Passports,
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Paper watermark
Example

Some Digital Watermarking Types (1/2)

Visible

vs. Invisible:

Visible such as a company logo stamped on an image or

Video.
Invisible intended to be imperceptible to the human eye
or inaudible. the watermark can only be determined through
watermark extraction or detection by computers.

Fragile

vs. Robust :

Fragile watermarks break down easily.

Robust survive manipulations of content.

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Some Digital Watermarking Types (2/2)

Public vs. private Private watermarking techniques

require that the original be used as a basis of
encryption whereas public does not

Public-key vs. secret-key Secret-key

watermarking uses the same watermarking key to read
the content as the key that was inserted into the image;
public key uses different keys for watermarking the
image and reading the image

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Some Desired Properties of (DW) ( 1/3)

1. Robustness
2. Tamper Resistance
3.

Economically Implementable

4. Unambiguous
5. Capacity
6. Quality

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Desired Properties ( 2/3)

(1) Robustness: A watermark must be difficult or
impossible to remove, at least without visibly degrading
the original image. A watermark must survive image
modifications.

Geometric distortions: rotation, scaling, translation, etc.

(2) Tamper Resistance: The watermark must resist any

type of attacks, what ever the intentions are: remove or
modify
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Desired Properties ( 3/3)

(3) Economically implementable: Time and
effort, cost.
(4) Unambiguous: The watermark, when
retrieved, should unambiguously identify the
owner.
(5) Capacity: The amount of information that can be
embedded
(6) Quality: (High Quality) - Quality not degraded
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Properties Tradeoff
Robustness

Quality

Capacity

Embedding and Extraction Complexity

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Important Definitions
Cover : Audio-video, text in which data will be hidden
Watermark: What is actually added to the cover
Information: message to be added
Watermarking key: Secret parameter needed for
embedding & detecting the watermark & extracting the
information
Watermarking Function: Embedding & Extraction
algorithms.
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Watermarking Process
Two major steps:

Location Selection : Where to embed watermark

Processing : How to modify original data to

embed watermark

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Watermarking Embedding &

Extraction
Cover Image

Cover + WM

Cover + WM

Embedding F : Watermarked Image = Function (Cover, Watermark, Key)

Extraction F : Watermark = Function (Watermarked Image, Key(
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Watermarking Techniques
Text Varying spaces after punctuation, spaces in
between lines of text, spaces at the end of
sentences, etc.
Audio Low bit coding, random.
Images / Video Least-significant bit, random

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Text Watermarking
Techniques: Varying spaces after punctuation, spaces in
between lines of text, spaces at the end of sentences,
etc.

Examples:
Line Shift Coding : Shift every other line up or down

slightly in order to encode data

Word Shift Coding: Shifts some words slightly left or
right in order to encode data

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Image Watermarking / LSB

LSB: Using the least significant bits of each pixel in
one image to hide the most significant bits of
another.

Pixels may be chosen randomly according to a

key

Steps:
1.
2.
3.

Load up both the host image and the image you need
to hide.
Chose the number of bits you wish to hide the secret
image in.
Combine the pixels from both images
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LSB - Example
00111100
01000010
10111101
10100001
10100001
10111101
01000010
00111100

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Audio Watermarking
Low Bit Coding
Echo Data Hiding

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Audio Watermarking
Low Bit Coding

Most digital audio is created by sampling the signal

and quantizing the sample with a 16-bit quantizer.
The rightmost bit, or low order bit, of each sample
can be changed from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0
This modification from one sample value to another
is not perceptible by most people and the audio
signal still sounds the same

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Audio Watermarking
Echo Data Hiding

Discrete copies of the original signal are

mixed in with the original signal creating
echoes of each sound.
By using two different time values between
an echo and the original sound, a binary 1 or
binary 0 can be encoded.

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Video Watermarking
Video sequences consists of a series of consecutive

and equally time-spaced (Frames) still images

in general, very similar with image watermarking so,
image watermark method is applicable to video directly
Video watermark imposes real or near real-time
watermarking system

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Attackers Main Goal

Attackers seek to destroy watermark for the

purposes of use without having to pay royalties
to the originator of the content.

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Why do we need to study attacks?

Identify weakness
Propose improvement Security
Attackers are knowledgeable, creative, have
lots of time, and are numerous

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Attacks on Watermarking
Two Sets of Attacks
Unintentional
All image manipulations commonly used to
prepare images for print publication. For
example:

Resizing, rotation, sharpening, contrast

modification, compression, ect.

Intentional (Malicious)

All the well-known intentional attacks include:

Disabling, altering, embedding new watermark, ect.
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Intentional Watermark Attacks (1/2)

Active Attacks

hacker tries to remove the watermark

or make it undetectable. Applying Geometric

transformation: rotation, scaling, translation, change
aspect ratio.

Passive Attacks hacker tries to determine whether

there is a watermark and identify it. However, no

damage or removal is done.

Collusion Attacks hacker uses several copies of one

piece of media, each with a different watermark, to

construct a copy with no watermark.

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Intentional Watermark Attacks (2/2)

Forgery Attacks Attacher tries to embed a valid watermark of
their own rather than remove one.

Conspiracy Attacks : several conspirators, each of whom has

procured a copy of the same image (differing only in the
watermark which is unique to each copy).

Presentation Attacks: Watermark detection failure. Geometric

transformation, rotation, scaling, translation, change aspect ratio,
etc.

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Limitations / Conclusions
Rapidly growing field of digitized images, video and audio has

urged for the need of protection.

Watermarking is a key process in the protection of copyright

ownership of electronic data (image, videos, audio, ...).

Digital watermarking does not prevent copying or distribution.
Digital watermarking alone is not a complete solution for

access/copy control or copyright protection.

Digital watermarks cannot survive every possible attack.
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Challenges in Watermarking Research

Watermark survival for all types of attacks

intentional and unintentional.

Embedding a Color image watermarking
Multiple layers watermark that aim to protect

each other from being analyzed -The more

robust and reliable the implementation is, the
longer it will last.
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References
1.

M. Kutter, S. Voloshynovskiy and A. Herrigel, The watermark Copy Attack,

Security and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents, II, SPIE-3971: 371-280,
2000.

2.

S. Craver, N. Memon, B.-L. Yeo, and M. Yeung. Resolving rightful

ownerships with invisible watermarking techniques: Limitations, attacks
and implications. IEEE Trans. on Selected Areas of Communications,
16(4):573586, 1998.

3.

I. Cox, J. Kilian, F. T. Leighton, and T. Shamoon. Secure spread spectrum

watermarking for multimedia. IEEE Trans. on Image Processing,
6(12):16731687, 1997.

4.

I. J. Cox and J.-P. Linnartz. Some general methods for tampering with
watermarks. IEEE Trans. on Selected Areas of Communications, 16(4):587
593, 1998.
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References
http://www-nt.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de/~su/seminar
/ws99/slides/su.pdf
6. http://www.compris.com/TextHide
7. http://www.infosyssec.com/infosyssec/Steganography/
watermarkingAttack.htm
8. http://www.lnt.de/~hartung/ProcIEEEHartungKutter.pdf
9. http://www.watermarkingworld.org
10. http://wwwstu.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/Courses/digitisation
11. http://www.inria.fr/Watermarking
12. http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/msc/teaching/opt5/archive/20
02-03/slides/watermarking.pdf
5.

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Thanks for your kind attention

any Comments

???
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