Issues on Image Authentication

Multimedia authentication distinguishes itself from other data integrity security issues because of its unique property of content integrity in several different levels — from signal syntax levels to semantic levels. In this section, we describe several image authentication issues, including the mathematical forms of optimal multimedia authentication systems, a description of robust digital signature, the theoretical bound of information hiding capacity of images, an introduction of the self-authentication-and-recovery image (SARI) system, and a novel technique for image/video authentication in the semantic level. This chapter provides an overview of these image authentication issues.

Design Principles for Active Audio and Video Fingerprinting

Active fingerprinting combines digital media watermarking and codes for collusion-secure customer identification. This requires specialized strategies for watermark embedding to lessen the thread of attacks like marked media comparison or mixing. We introduce basic technologies for fingerprinting and digital watermarking and possible attacks against active fingerprinting. Based on this, we provide test results, discuss the consequences and suggest an optimized embedding method for audio fingerprinting.

Digital Audio Watermarking

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey and summary of the technical achievements in the research area of digital audio watermarking. In order to give a big picture of the current status of this area, this chapter covers the research aspects of performance evaluation for audio watermarking, human auditory system, digital watermarking for PCM audio, digital watermarking for wav-table synthesis audio, and digital watermarking for compressed audio. Based on the current technology used in digital audio watermarking and the demand from real-world applications, future promising directions are identified.

Digital Watermarking for Protection of Intellectual Property

Digital watermarking techniques have been developed to protect the copyright of media signals. This chapter aims to provide a universal review and background about the watermarking definition, concept and the main contributions in this field. The chapter starts with a general view of digital data, the Internet and the products of these two, namely, the multimedia and the e-commerce. Then, it provides the reader with some initial background and history of digital watermarking. The chapter presents an extensive and deep literature review of the field of digital watermarking and watermarking algorithms. It also highlights the future prospective of the digital watermarking.

Data Hiding in Document Images

With the proliferation of digital media such as images, audio, and video, robust digital watermarking and data hiding techniques are needed for copyright protection, copy control, annotation, and authentication of document images. While many techniques have been proposed for digital color and grayscale images, not all of them can be directly applied to binary images in general and document images in particular. The difficulty lies in the fact that changing pixel values in a binary image could introduce irregularities that are very visually noticeable. Over the last few years, we have seen a growing but limited number of papers proposing new techniques and ideas for binary image watermarking and data hiding. In this chapter we present an overview and summary of recent developments on this important topic, and discuss important issues such as robustness and data hiding capacity of the different techniques.

Audio Watermarking

The recent explosion of the Internet as a collaborative medium has opened the door for people who want to share their work. Nonetheless, the advantages of such an open medium can pose very serious problems for authors who do not want their works to be distributed without their consent. As new methods for copyright protection are devised, expectations around them are formed and sometimes improvable claims are made. This chapter covers one such technology: audio watermarking. First, the field is introduced, and its properties and applications are discussed. Then, the most common techniques for audio watermarking are reviewed, and the framework is set for the objective measurement of such techniques. The last part of the chapter proposes a novel test and a set of metrics for thorough benchmarking of audio watermarking schemes. The development of such a benchmark constitutes a first step towards the standardization of the requirements and properties that such systems should display.

Digital Signature-Based Image Authentication

This chapter is intended to disseminate the concept of digital signature-based image authentication. Capabilities of digital signature-based image authentication and its superiority over watermarking-based approaches are described first. Subsequently, general models of this technique — strict authentication and non-strict authentication are introduced. Specific schemes of the two general models are also reviewed and compared. Finally, based on the review, design issues faced by the researchers and developers are outlined.

Perceptual Data Hiding in Still Images

The idea of embedding some information within a digital media, in such a way that the inserted data are intrinsically part of the media itself, has aroused a considerable interest in different fields. One of the more examined issues is the possibility of hiding the highest possible amount of information without affecting the visual quality of the host data. For such a purpose, the understanding of the mechanisms underlying Human Vision is a mandatory requirement. Hence, the main phenomena regulating the Human Visual System will be firstly discussed and their exploitation in a data hiding system will be then considered.