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FRAGILE INVISIBLE

WATERMARK TECHNIQUE

Y.PARVATHI
B.tech, C.S.E (2nd yr.)
RGMC of Engineering & Technology, Nandyal
E-mail:parvathi_cse2006@yahoo.co.in

SIPRA SINGH
B.TECH (CSE)
RGMC of Engineering & Tech, Nandyal-51850
Email: sipra_aries@yahoo.co.in

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ABSTRACT

The use of Internet has become widespread in today’s world and this has led to the
problem of protection of intellectual property. On the Internet today it is possible to duplicate
digital information a million fold and distribute it over the entire world in seconds.
To solve the problem of publishing digital images, researchers have come up with
Digital Image Watermarking. This method allows the owner of the original image to add an
invisible watermark to the digital image before publishing it.
One of the simplest methods to embed the authentication data into the image is the LSB
method. This method employs embedding the authentication data into the least significant bits
of the image pixels. But this method is static in the sense that the user has no choice over the
pixels to embed the data into.
In this paper we propose a new dynamic method for embedding the data into the image
using the LSB method. The method that we propose uses the user’s preference of pixels to
embed the data. This method gives more control to the user and also increases the robustness of
the entire method.
The method has been implemented over different images and promising results have
been obtained.

Key words: Authentication, LSB, Dynamic Method.


1.Introduction

In the Middle Ages, kings, dukes, barons, and anyone else who styled themselves
important would carve a design onto a stamp or a ring. This was used to impress a wax or lead
closure sealing the wrappings of items sent by courier, ostensibly proving that the document or
package did indeed come from them and hence could be considered authentic. cryptographic
secret key, inhibiting anybody that does not possess the secret key from reading or even
detecting the watermark.The idea is to ensure the Watermarking is a method of protecting
digital material. The digital watermarking system is based on that a code is embedded in the
image. The code can include various types of information for example ownership of the image,

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right to copy and terminal identification (a specific number for each user the image has been
distributed to). The code is digitized, encoded as additional noise and incorporated in the
picture. The size of the encoded information has to be kept to a minimum of bits to minimize
noise. Every member has an unique code that works as an index to the register. This code is
encoded into the image.

2 Different ways of providing security

The security for the data, transmitting through high speed data networks can be
provided in 4 different ways as follows

(a) Cryptography: It is the process of disguising a message in such a way as to hide its
substance by using keys. i.e. the message which is to be sent through the network is encoded
using cryptographic algorithm, the resulting text is called cipher text. This is transmitted
through the network. At the receiving end the cipher text is decoded and the original text is
obtained. In this the security is entirely dependent on cryptographic algorithm.

(b) Steganography: It is the process of hiding secrete message inside another message,
such that the very existence of secrete is concealed. Generally the sender writes an innocuous
message and then conceals a secrete message on the same piece of paper. Historical tricks
include invisible inks, tiny pin punctures on selected characters, minute differences between
handwritten characters, pencil marks on type written characters, grilles which cover most of the
message except for a few characters, and so on.

(c) Time stamping: It is the process of adding time to the data without regard to the
physical medium on which it resides. With the help of time we can identify the right owner of
the intellectual property.

(d) Watermarking: It is the process of embedding the code into multimedia object.

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2.1 Types of watermarks
There are different varieties of watermarks are available depending on different factors
under consideration; one of such factor is visibility. Depending on visibility watermarks are
classified as
2.2.1 Visible watermarks
A visible watermark is a visible translucent image which is overlaid on the primary
image. Perhaps consisting of the logo or seal of the organization which holds the rights to the
primary image, it allows the primary image to be viewed, but still marks it clearly as the
property of the owning organization.

It is important to overlay the watermark in a way which makes it difficult to remove.


An example shows both a watermark and an image with the watermark overlaid.
2.2.2 Invisible watermarks

An invisible watermark is an overlaid image which cannot be seen, but which can be
detected algorithmically. Different applications of this technology call for two very different
types of invisible watermarks:

(i) A watermark, which is destroyed when the image is manipulated digitally in any
way, may be useful in proving authenticity of an image. If the watermark is still intact, then the
image has not been "doctored." If the watermark has been destroyed, then the image has been
tampered with. Such a technology might be important, for example, in admitting digital images
as evidence in court.

(ii) An invisible watermark, which is very resistant to destruction under any image
manipulation, might be useful in verifying ownership of an image suspected of
misappropriation. Digital detection of the watermark would indicate the source of the image.

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2.2 Properties of watermark
(i) Unobtrusive: The watermark should be perceptually invisible, or its presence
should not interfere with the object being protected.

(ii) Robust: The watermark must be difficult (hopefully impossible) to remove. If only
partial knowledge is available (for example, the exact location of the watermark in an image is
unknown) then attempts to remove or destroy a watermark, should result in severe degradation
in fidelity before the watermark is lost. In particular, the watermark should be robust to :

(a) Common signal processing: The watermark should still be retrievable even if
common signal processing operations are applied to the data. These include, digital to analog
and analog to digital conversion, resampling, requantization (including dithering and
recompression), and common signal enhancements to image contrast and color, or audio bass
and treble, for example.

(b) Common geometric distortions (image and video data): Watermarks in image and
video data should also be immune from geometric image operations such as rotation,
translation, cropping and scaling.

(c) Subterfuge Attacks: Collusion and Forgery In addition, the watermark should be
robust to collusion by multiple individuals who each possess a watermarked copy of the data.
That is, the watermark should be robust to combining copies of the same data set to destroy the
watermarks.

Further, if a digital watermark is to be used in litigation, it must be impossible for


colluders to combine their images to generate a different valid watermark with the intention of
framing a third party.
(iii) Universal: The same digital watermarking algorithm should apply to all three
media under consideration. This is potentially helpful in the watermarking of multimedia
products. Also, this feature is conducive to implementation of audio and image/video
watermarking algorithms on common hardware.

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(iv) Unambiguous: Retrieval of the watermark should unambiguously identify the
owner. Furthermore, the accuracy of owner identification should degrade gracefully in the face
of attack.

3.Methodology
3.1 Fragile invisible watermark technique

As we know a digital image can be considered to be a two dimensional array of values


or sampled image intensities in the form of gray levels. Each gray level is quantized or
assigned one of finite set of numbers represented by fixed number of bits, for monochrome
gray level image it is 8-bits. Each pixel gray level value stored in these 8-bits, but as we know
the LSB of each pixel contains least information of the image gray level because after all it can
effect the gray level value by an amount 1. Hence by making all these LSB’s to zero in each
pixel value, the human visual system can’t find the difference to this image and original
image. Hence, we can use these LSB”s to hide our watermark or copy right information in the
LSB’s of image pixels.
In this paper we propose a new watermarking algorithm which is dynamic in nature.
Here the user has the choice to select the pixel from the watermark embedding process has to
start. This pixel number is stored in the LSBs of the first eight pixels of the image.
The process is explained as follows…

a) Get the data that is to be inserted into the image from the user.
b) Get the pixel number from which the data embedding has to begin
c) Convert this into the binary form and replace it with the first pixel of the cover
image.
d) Read the ASCII value of the first character in the message or watermark (ASCII
character contains 8-bits)
e) Place the 1-MSB bit of message/image in the LSB position of pixel that is
mentioned in the first pixel, and next 2-MSB bit in the LSB position of next pixel,
….and so on until all 8-bits of first ASCII value of the message/watermark is placed
in the successive 8-pixels LSB’s positions.
f) Read the next ASCII value in the message/watermark and repeat steps (d) and (e)

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g) Repeat all the above steps until all the ASCII values are covered in the given
message/watermark file
When all the above steps are finished we can obtained the watermarked image, we can’t
find the difference between original image (Un-watermarked image) and watermarked image.
3.2 Results:
(a) Images with copy right information hidden in it shown below along with it original image

Original Image Watermarked Image


Message Hidden:- This property is copy righted to Mr. RAO’s company, illegal use of this
photograph in any manner is considered to be a crime…..!

Original Image Watermarked Image

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Message Hidden:- This property is copy righted to Mr. RAO’s company, illegal use of this
photograph in any manner is considered to be a crime…..!

(B) The images watermarked with a logo image are shown below

LOGO Image

Original Image Watermarked Image with Logo

3.3 Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:
• It is simple than all other time domain methods
• It can also be used for authentication purpose
• It can also be used for integrity checking
• It gives the user choice of selecting from where to start the embedding.

Disadvantages:
• If all LSB’s are set to zero in the Image file we can’t prove copy rights hence it
is simple to erase the watermark from object being protected.

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• If a attacker modifies some important content of image and then sets the all
LSB’s of image pixels to zero, it can’t detect the integrity of the content,
authenticity also not clear in this type of attack.

3.4 Further extensions

• The message/watermark i.e the copy rights can be can be encrypted using
cryptographic algorithms and then it can be placed in LSB’s of image pixels, this
provides a greater security to the watermark stored in the image.

• You can also use any random number generator algorithm and insert the bits in the
LSB of pixels as pixel position is given by random number generator in the image
file. The algorithm should be kept as secrete here.

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REFERENCES

1) R.L Lagendijk, G.C. Langelaar, and I. Setyawan, “Watermarking digital image and
video data,” IEEE Signal Processing Mag., Vol. 17, pp. 20-46, Setp. 2000.

2) F.Hartung and M.Kutter, “Multimedia water marking techniques”, Proc. IEEE, vol.87,
pp 1079-1107, July 2004

3) M.Yeung and F.Mintzer, “An invisible watermarking technique for image verification,”
in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Image Processing, Santa Barbara, CA, Oct. 2002, pp 680-683.

4) P.W. Wong, “A public key watermark for image verification and authentication”, in
Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Image Processing, Chicago, II, October 4-7, 2001, pp 425-429.

5) J.fridrichm M.Goljan, and A.C. Baldoza, “New fragile authentication watermark for
images, “in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Image Processing, Vancouver, BC, Cannada, Sept.
10-13, 2000.

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i . ex e

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