An Adaptive Embedding Strength Watermarking Algorithm Based on Shearlets’ Capture Directional Features

The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is unable to represent the directional features of an image. Similarly, a fixed embedding strength is not able to establish an ideal balance between imperceptibility and robustness of a watermarked image. In this work, we propose an adaptive embedding strength watermarking algorithm based on shearlets’ capture directional features (S-AES). We improve the watermarking algorithm in the domain of DWT using non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST). The improvement is made in terms of coping with anti-geometric attacks. The embedding strength is optimized by artificial bee colony (ABC) to achieve higher robustness under the premise of satisfying imperceptibility. The principle components (PC) of the watermark are embedded into the host image to overcome the false positive problem. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has better imperceptibility and strong robustness against multi-attacks, especially those of high intensity.

Heuristic based malicious URL detection

Phishing is one of the most potentially disruptive actions that can be performed on the Internet. Intellectual property and other pertinent business information could potentially be at risk if a user falls for a phishing attack . The adversary sends an email with a link to a fraudulent site to lure consumers into divulging their confidential information. One of the main goal of this research is to detect phishing attempts via email. The algorithm in the previous work analyses the body text in an email to detect whether the email message asks the user to do some action such as clicking on the link that directs the user to a fraudulent website. This work expanded the text analysis portion of that algorithm, which performed poorly in catching phishing emails. The original algorithm has considerably have a lower result in filtering out malicious email as compared to modified algorithm.To address the False Positive problem, a statistical approach was adopted and the method ameliorated the False Positive Rate while minimizing the decrease in the phishing detection accuracy.

A Hybrid Blind Watermarking With Redundant Discrete Wavelet and Hadamard Transform

The rapid growth in usage of digital technologies brings tremendous interest to the field of digital authentication. Digital watermarking is one of the most powerful authentication techniques used to restrict unauthorized usage of copyrighted images. Unique logo can be inserted into different copies of the same digital image for different clients. This will curtail the illegal usage. Most of the earlier works used Redundant Discrete Wavelet (RDWT) transform in combination with SVD. These watermarking schemes suffered with false positive problem. Hence, in this work, a hybrid blind watermarking is developed by using a combination of Redundant Discrete Wavelet (RDWT) and Hadamard transform to get rid of false positive problem and to produce imperceptible, robust and secure watermarking scheme.

Visual Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex with Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification and Eriochrome Black T

The present study was aimed to improve the method for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex recently reported on Letters in Applied Microbiology. Eriochrome black T (EBT) was added to the reaction system of LAMP, due to complexation of EBT with magnesium ions, the color of reaction solution was red at beginning, when the reaction was in process, the precipitate of magnesium ions and pyrophosphate ions formed, EBT lost magnesium ions, the color of reaction solution became sky blue from red gradually, and the method exhibits a high sensitivity of 8 fg/μL. The improved LAMP assay can detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex rapidly, sensitively and visually, the method developed in this study had solved the “bottleneck” in popularization and application of LAMP technology, which had not only avoided aerosol pollution but also solved the false positive problem caused by primer dimers.