No Arabic abstract
Reversible visible watermarking (RVW) is an active copyright protection mechanism. It not only transparently superimposes copyright patterns on specific positions of digital images or video frames to declare the copyright ownership information, but also completely erases the visible watermark image and thus enables restoring the original host image without any distortion. However, existing RVW algorithms mostly construct the reversible mapping mechanism for a specific visible watermarking scheme, which is not general. Hence, we propose a generic RVW framework to accommodate various visible watermarking schemes, which is based on Regularized Graph Fourier Transform (GFT) coding. In particular, we obtain a reconstruction data packet -- the compressed difference image between the watermarked image and the original host image, which is embedded into the watermarked image via any conventional reversible data hiding method to facilitate the blind recovery of the host image. The key is to achieve compact compression of the difference image for efficient embedding of the reconstruction data packet. To this end, we propose regularized GFT coding, where the difference image is smoothed via the graph Laplacian regularizer for more efficient compression and then encoded by multi-resolution GFTs in an approximately optimal manner. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art performance with high data compression efficiency, which is applicable to both gray-scale and color images. In addition, the proposed generic framework accommodates various visible watermarking algorithms, which demonstrates strong versatility.
The frequent exchange of multimedia information in the present era projects an increasing demand for copyright protection. In this work, we propose a novel audio zero-watermarking technology based on graph Fourier transform for enhancing the robustness with respect to copyright protection. In this approach, the combined shift operator is used to construct the graph signal, upon which the graph Fourier analysis is performed. The selected maximum absolute graph Fourier coefficients representing the characteristics of the audio segment are then encoded into a feature binary sequence using K-means algorithm. Finally, the resultant feature binary sequence is XOR-ed with the watermark binary sequence to realize the embedding of the zero-watermarking. The experimental studies show that the proposed approach performs more effectively in resisting common or synchronization attacks than the existing state-of-the-art methods.
Digital watermarks have been considered a promising way to fight software piracy. Graph-based watermarking schemes encode authorship/ownership data as control-flow graph of dummy code. In 2012, Chroni and Nikolopoulos developed an ingenious such scheme which was claimed to withstand attacks in the form of a single edge removal. We extend the work of those authors in various aspects. First, we give a formal characterization of the class of graphs generated by their encoding function. Then, we formulate a linear-time algorithm which recovers from ill-intentioned removals of $k leq 2$ edges, therefore proving their claim. Furthermore, we provide a simpler decoding function and an algorithm to restore watermarks with an arbitrary number of missing edges whenever at all possible. By disclosing and improving upon the resilience of Chroni and Nikolopouloss watermark, our results reinforce the interest in regarding it as a possible solution to numerous applications.
While many games were designed for steganography and robust watermarking, few focused on reversible watermarking. We present a two-encoder game related to the rate-distortion optimization of content-adaptive reversible watermarking. In the game, Alice first hides a payload into a cover. Then, Bob hides another payload into the modified cover. The embedding strategy of Alice affects the embedding capacity of Bob. The embedding strategy of Bob may produce data-extraction errors to Alice. Both want to embed as many pure secret bits as possible, subjected to an upper-bounded distortion. We investigate non-cooperative game and cooperative game between Alice and Bob. When they cooperate with each other, one may consider them as a whole, i.e., an encoder uses a cover for data embedding with two times. When they do not cooperate with each other, the game corresponds to a separable system, i.e., both want to independently hide a payload within the cover, but recovering the cover may need cooperation. We find equilibrium strategies for both players under constraints.
Due to the rapid growth of machine learning tools and specifically deep networks in various computer vision and image processing areas, application of Convolutional Neural Networks for watermarking have recently emerged. In this paper, we propose a deep end-to-end diffusion watermarking framework (ReDMark) which can be adapted for any desired transform space. The framework is composed of two Fully Convolutional Neural Networks with the residual structure for embedding and extraction. The whole deep network is trained end-to-end to conduct a blind secure watermarking. The framework is customizable for the level of robustness vs. imperceptibility. It is also adjustable for the trade-off between capacity and robustness. The proposed framework simulates various attacks as a differentiable network layer to facilitate end-to-end training. For JPEG attack, a differentiable approximation is utilized, which drastically improves the watermarking robustness to this attack. Another important characteristic of the proposed framework, which leads to improved security and robustness, is its capability to diffuse watermark information among a relatively wide area of the image. Comparative results versus recent state-of-the-art researches highlight the superiority of the proposed framework in terms of imperceptibility and robustness.
As an efficient watermark attack method, geometric distortions destroy the synchronization between watermark encoder and decoder. And the local geometric distortion is a famous challenge in the watermark field. Although a lot of geometric distortions resilient watermarking schemes have been proposed, few of them perform well against local geometric distortion like random bending attack (RBA). To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel watermark synchronization process and the corresponding watermarking scheme. In our scheme, the watermark bits are represented by random patterns. The message is encoded to get a watermark unit, and the watermark unit is flipped to generate a symmetrical watermark. Then the symmetrical watermark is embedded into the spatial domain of the host image in an additive way. In watermark extraction, we first get the theoretically mean-square error minimized estimation of the watermark. Then the auto-convolution function is applied to this estimation to detect the symmetry and get a watermark units map. According to this map, the watermark can be accurately synchronized, and then the extraction can be done. Experimental results demonstrate the excellent robustness of the proposed watermarking scheme to local geometric distortions, global geometric distortions, common image processing operations, and some kinds of combined attacks.