IMAGE AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUES

A SEMINAR REPORT

Submitted by

MADHURENDRA KUMAR

in partial fulfillment of the award of the degree

of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

in

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY,

KOCHI-682022

AUGUST 2008
DIVISION OF COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

KOCHI-682022

Cerified that this is a bonafide record of seminar entitled

“IMAGE AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUE”

done by the following student

MADHURENDRA KUMAR

of the viith semester,Computer Science and Eengineering in the year 2008 in

partial fulfillment of the requirements to the award of Degree of Bachelor of

Technology in Computer Science and Engineering of Cochin University of

Science and Technology.

DHANYA K SUDHEESH Dr. David Peter S

SEMINAR GUIDE Head of the Department

Date:
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I thank my seminar guide Mrs. Dhanya k sudheesh, Lecturer, CUSAT, for

her proper guidance, and valuable suggestions. I am indebted to Mr. David Peter
S,
the HOD, Computer Science division & other faculty members for giving me an
opportunity to learn and present the seminar. If not for the above mentioned peopl
my seminar would never have been completed successfully. I once again extend
my sincere thanks to all of them.

MADHURENDRA KUMAR
 ABSTRACT

Automatic video surveillance (AVS) systems are used for continuous and effective

monitoring of dangerous and remote sites. Video data acquired by the automatic

video surveillance system can be recorded and presented as a proof in front of

court law. But digital video data lacks legal validity due to the ease to manipulate

them without leaving any trace of modification. Image authentication is the

process

of giving a legal validity to the video data. By authentication technique content

tampering can be detected and we can indicate the true origin of the data. There a

two types of authentication schemes, which are

1. Cryptographic data authentication.

2. Watermarking-based authentication.

In this presentation an attempt is made to present the basic features of the image

authentication techniques.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER NO. TITLE PAGE NO

1 ABSTRACT iii

2 LIST OF FIGURES v

3 LIST OF SYMBOLS vi

4 INTRODUCTION 1

5. AUTOMATIC VISUAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM 2

6. AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUES 3

7. CRYPTOGRAPHY 4

8. CRYPTOGRAPHIC DATA AUTHENTICATION 8

8.1 DRAWBACKS OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC

AUTHENTICATION

9. WATERMARKING 10

9.1 CLASSIFICATION OF WATERMARKING 11

AUTHENTICATION SCHEMS

9.2 REQIREMENTS OF W ATERM ARKING BASED 13

VS DATA AUTHENTICATION

10. WATERMARKING ALGORITHM 15

10.1 WATERMARK GENERATIONAND EMBEDDING 15

10.2 WATERMARK DETECTION 17

10.3 AUTHENTICATION CHECK 18

11. OTHER APPLICATIONS 19

12. ADVANTATGES 20

13. DISADVANTAGES 21

14. CONCLUSION 22

15. REFERENCES 23
 LIST OF FIGURES

SI NO IMAGES PAGE NO

2.1 Automatic Visual Surveillance System 2

4.1 Encryption and Decryption 4

5.1 Cryptogarphic Method 6

6.1 Types of Watermarking 12

7.2 Watermark Detection 17

 List of Symbols, Abbreviations and Nomenclature

SI. NO. ITEM DEFINITION

1 AVSS Automatic Visual Surveillance System

2 VS Visual Surveillance
Image Authentication Techniques

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper explores the various techniques used to authenticate the visual data rec
by the automatic video surveillance system. Automatic video
surveillance systems are
used for continuous and effective monitoring and reliable control of remote and
dangerous sites. Som e practical issues m ust be taken in to account, in order to take
advantage of the potentiality of VS system. The validity of visual data acquired,
processed and possibly stored by the VS system , as a proof in front of a court of law
one of such issues. But visual data can be m odified using sophisticated processing t
w ithout leaving any visible trace of the m odification.
o digital
S or im age data have no
value as legal proof, since doubt would always exist that they had been intentionally
tam pered with to incrim inate or exculpate the defendant. Besides, the video data ca
created artificially by computerized techniques su
ch as morphing. Therefore the true
origin of the data m ust be indicated to use them as legal proof. By data authenticat
m ean here a procedure capable of ensuring that data have not been tam pered w ith
indicating their true origin.

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2. AUTOMATIC VISUAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM

Automatic Visual Surveillance system is a self monitoring system which consists of a

video camera unit, central unit and transmission networks.(figure)

2.1 Automatic Visual Surveillance System

A pool of digital cameras is in charge of frame the scene of interest and sent
corresponding video sequence to central unit. The central unit is in charge of analyz
the sequence and generating an alarm w henever a suspicious situation is detected.
unit also transm its the video sequences to
intervention
an centre such as security service
provider, the police departm ent or a security guard unit. Som ewhere in the system
video sequence or som e part of it m ay be stored and w hen needed the stored seque
can be used as a proof in front of court
of law . If the stored digital video sequences have
to be legally credible, som e m eans m ust be envisaged to detect content tam pering
reliably trace back to the data origin

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3. AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUES

Authentication techniques are perform ed on visual data to indicate that the data is
forgery; they should
not dam age visual quality of the video data. At the sam e tim e, th
techniques must indicate the malicious modifications include removal or insertion o
certain fram es, change of faces of individual, tim e and background etc. Only a prope
authenticatedvideo data has got the value as legal proof. There are two m ajor techni
for authenticating video data. They are as follows

3.1 Cryptographic Data Authentication

It is a s tra ig h t fo rw a rd w a y to p ro v id e v id e o a u thneanmtice alytio nthrough

, the joint

use of asymmetric key encryption and the digital Hash function.

Cameras calculate a digital summary (digest) of the video by means of hash functio
Then they encrypt the digest with their
private key, thus obtaining a signed digest which
is transm itted to the central unit together w ith acquired sequences. This digest is us
prove data integrity or to trace back to their origin. Signed digest can only read by u
public key of the camera.

3.2 Watermarking- based authentication

W aterm arking data authentication is the m odern approach to authenticate visual da

imperceptibly embedding a digital watermark signal on the data.

Digital w aterm arking is the art and science

emof
bedding copyright inform ation in the
original files. The inform ation em bedded is called
‘waterm arks‘. Digital waterm arks are
difficult to rem ove without noticeably degrading the content and are a covert m ean
situation where copyright fails to provide robustness.

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4. CRYPTOGRAPHY

M ounting concern over the new threats to privacy and security has lead pread
to wide s
adoption of cryptography. Cryptography is the science of transform ing docum ents. I
mainly two functions

♦ Encryption
♦ Decryption

The purpose of encryption is to render a docum ent unreadable by all except those w
authorize to read it.
Cryptographers refer to the content of the original docum ent as p
text. Plain text is converted in to cipher form using an algorithm and a variable or ke
The key is a randomly selected string of numbers.

PLAIN
TEXT CIPHER TEXT

ENCRPTION DECRYPTION
ENCRYPTION ALGORITHEM KEY DECRYPTION
KEY ALGORITHEM

CIPHER
TEXT PLAIN TEXT

4.1 Encryption and Decryption

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Only after decoding the cipher text using the key the content
the docum
of ent is revealed
to the common people. Encryption schemes are classified in to :

1. Symmetric encryption

In which the same key is used to both encode and decode the document.

2. Public key or asymmetric encryption

It requires a pair of
keys: one for encrypting the plain text and the other for decrypting
the cipher text. A file encrypted w ith one key of a pair can be decrypted w ith other k
the same pair

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5. CRYPTOGRAPHIC DATA AUTHENTICATION

To authenticate visual data each video cam era is assigned a different public or
keypriva
pair, with private key hardwired within the cameras. A document encrypted with the
private key of any particular camera can be decrypted with its own public key. This
property is used to provide center authentication that is to trace back to origin
the true
of
the data.

5.1 Cryptogarphic Method

Before sending the video sequence to the central unit, cameras calculate a digital
sum m aryor digest of the video by m eans of a proper hash function. The digest is the

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encrypted with their private key. Encryption is done by considering the digitized val
the brightness of each pixel. Digital signal is a sequence ofzeros and ones and it is

encrypted with the private key using a proper algorithm . The signed digest thus obt
is then transmitted to the central unit together with the acquired visual sequence.
Later the signal digest is used to prove data integr
ity or to trace back to their origin. The
signed digest is read using the public key of the cam era which produce the video an
check if it corresponds to the digest derived from the decrypted video content using
same hash function.

Any m anipulation
of the data w ill change the calculated im age digest derived from the
decrypted data. Any discrepancy between the decrypted digest and calculated imag
digest indicate that the data has been tam pered, w ith identical digest indicates that
data is genuine.

Value of the visual data can be added by tying each fram e to the particular label of
instant the fram e has been produced yet. This can be achieved by printing date and
of creation of each frame. Any modification of either the date time
or could be easily
revealed since it would change the locally calculated image digest.

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5.1 DRAWBACKS OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC AUTHENTICATION

Even though cryptographic data authentication is highly resistant to content tam per
suffers from few drawbacks. They are as follows:
1.Knowledge of private key
If the manipulatorknows the private key of the camera, he can change the digest to
involve the m odifications he had m ade on the actual sequence. But the possibility o
a thing is very small because the private key is hardwired within the camera.

2.Impossible to distinguish between malicious and innocuous modification

It is difficult to distinguish between malicious and innocuous manipulations if

cryptography is used. Innocuous modifications include compression of the video
sequences. These m odifications are usual
ly perform ed by the central unit w hereas diges
is calculated on the basis of the uncom pressed data by the cam era. So on com press
correspondence between the digest and data would be lost.

3. High requirements of video camera

To avoid the above

discussed problem , the video cam era should perform the com pres
of the video sequences prior to digest calculation. This requires the video cam era to
high computation as storage requirements.

4. Delay in transmission
Digest calculations and encryption introduces a delay in transmission of video
documents. This is harmful in system where the timely generation of alarm is critica

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5. Protecting privacy is difficult

A part of the program cannot be rem oved for privacy reasons since it will alte
calculated digest.

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6. WATERMARKING

A digital waterm ark is a signal that is im perceptibly em beddeddigital

withindata. This
signal can be detected or extracted by m eans of com putations to m ake som e assert
about the host data.

Digital w aterm ark is a signal which added to a docum ent to authenticate it and to p
the ow nership. A com m only encountered
digital w aterm ark is the logo m ost television
channels display on the top of the television screen. Not only does it advertise the c
but also provides the legal benefit of having a source signature persist during video
recording. Watermark task consists of two main steps

1. W aterm ark casting:-in w hich the signal represented by the w aterm ark is transm it

o v e r th e c h a n n e l, th a t is in w a te rm a rk c a s tin g a n e n c o d etakes
r fu n catiohost
n image
‘f’ and a watermark ‘w’ and generate a new image
Fw= (f, w)

2. Watermark detection:-in which the signal is received and extracted from possibly
corrupted image.

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6.1 CLASSIFICATION OF WATERMARKING

AUTHENTICATION SCHEMS
The characteristics of waterm arking system largely depend on its application scenar
For instant copy w rite protection application require that the w aterm ark is robust ag
m ost com m on data m anipulation,ie its presents can still be detected after nondestru
transform ation of host docum ent. Tw o approaches for w aterm arking data
ntication
authe
are possible:
1. Fragile watermarking
2. Robust watermarking

Fragile waterm arking refers to the case w here w aterm ark inserted w ithin the data is
or altered as soon as host data undergoes any m odification. W aterm ark loss or alter
is taken as evidence that data has been tam pered w ith, whereas the inform ation co
within data used to demonstrate data origin

In case of robust w aterm arking a sum m ary of the candidate fram e or video sequenc
com puted and is inserted w ithin video
the sequence. Inform ation about the data origin i
also with the summary. To prove data integrity the information conveyed by the
w aterm ark is recovered and com pared w ith the actual content of the sequence. The
mismatch is taken as an evidence of data tampering. The capability to localize the
manipulation will depend on the summary of which is embedded in to the image.

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WATERMARKING

FRAGILE ROBUST
WATREMARKING WATERMARKIN
G

INVISIBLE VISIBLE DUAL

WATERMARKIN WATERMARKING WATERMARKIN
G G

6.1 Types of Watermarking

6.1.1 ROBUST VERSUS FRAGILE WATERMARK

Sem i fragile w aterm ark is m ore m ature than robust waterm arking. Tam per localizat
easier in fragile watermarking but it is difficult todistinguish between malicious and
innocuous manipulations.

Im age authentication by m eans of robust waterm arking is very prom ising w ith regar
the distinction betw een m alicious and innocuous m anipulations. The robustness of s
technique depends on the number of bits that can be hidden in to the image.

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6.2 REQIREMENTS OF WATERMARKING BASED VS DATA

AUTHENTICATION

In order to highlight the peculiarities of VS data authentication. Let us consider the m

common requirements for watermarking authentication techniques.

1. The authentication technique

m ust not deteriorate the visual quality of data quality.
2. The authentication technique should be able to identify any unauthorized process
acquired to visual data.
3. The authentication technique should not consider innocuous m anipulation,
im age
e.g.,
compression and zooming, as valid authentication attacks.
4. It should be difficult for unauthorized person to forge an authenticated image.
5. The authentication checking procedure should be easily performed by authorized
persons.
6. The authentication checking procedure should localize data tampering.

By considering particular cases the requirem ent for the authentication of VS data ar
following.

6.2.1 THE INVISIBILITY CONSTRAINT

The requirem ent on the deterioration ofvisual

the quality of authenticated data is usuall
referred to us as invisibility constraint.

The authentication technique m ust not deteriorate the visual quality of data. In this
case how ever this is not crucial issue since VS do not exhibit a com
quality
parable that of
visual data used in a m edia. VS data acquired by inexpensive, low quality devices. V

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analysis w ouldpossibly be carried out in a low court will focus on the sem antic conten
of the image, rather than on their visual quality.

6.2.2 MALICIOUS VERSUS INNOCUOS MANIPULATIONS

The authentication technique should be able to identify any nonauthorized

or m alicious
processing occurred to the visual data. Besides the authentication technique should
consider innocuous manipulation Eg: Image compression or Zooming, as valid
authentication techniques.

W hen data com pression is done in central unit

authentication
the is perform ed before
com pression and m ust survive it. To satisfy privacy com plaints, som e processing is
on the authenticated video, before it is stored. E.g. for obscuring the faces of person
which are unimportant on the law point of view. This kind of processing as to be
considered as innocuous. On the other side, the same processing procedure as to be
considered as m alicious w hen inform ation that is im portant for a court law is rem ov
A solution to this problem is offered by authe
ntication techniques capable of localizing
m anipulations. Once the m odification is precisely localized, it w ill be up to the court
to decide if it is malicious of innocuous.

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7. WATERMARKING ALGORITHM

A watermarking algorithm for VS data authentication based on semi-fragile

watermarking of each frame of the video sequenceis described in this section. The
various steps for the watermarking process are as follows.

7.1 WATERMARK GENERATION AND EMBEDDING

Watermark generation aims at producing a binary or ternary watermark W(X) using

digital key K and host im age f(x).
The waterm ark key corresponds to the im age owner o
cam era that has captured the im age. The block diagram of w aterm ark generation a
embedding is shown below.

In the proposed m ethod as indicating in the figure the waterm ark generation by usin
pseudo random number generator and appropriate thresholding.

The w aterm ark key used for waterm arking a specific fram e in the sequence is com p
of the cam era id and fram e num ber. Generating the w aterm ark key using fram e num
provides the advantage of producing frame–dependent watermarks.
In this case, fram e rem oval or fram e substitution can be easily detected as non auth
To perform authenticity check, the detection should first know the fram e num ber in
sequence which is always zero.

Watermark embedding is performed by altering all the pixels of the original frame
according to the following formula.

Fw(x) = f(x) if w(x) = 0

g 1 (f(x ) , n (x ))if w(x) =-1
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g2 (f(x), n(x) if w(x) =1

Where g1g2 are suitably designed function based on x.

n(x) denotes a function that depends on neighborhood of x.
The function g1g2 are called em bedding function and are selected so as to detect th
inverse detection function. D (fw(x), n(x)). The detection function, w hen applied to t
watermarked image fw(x), produces the watermark w(x).
D (fw(x), N(x)) = w(x)

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7.2 WATERMARK DETECTION

In the w aterm ark detection procedure, the detector generates first the water m ark f
fram e to be checked. To do so, the id num ber of cam era that produce the sequence
the frame number are needed.

7.2 Watermark Detection

A detection function D is defined such that by applying the detection function to the
watermarked image a detection image d(x) is produced.
d(x) = D (fw(x), n(x))

Now we frame the false detection image given by

E w (x ) = 1if w(x) 0 and w(x) d(x)

0 otherwise

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The false detection image has value 1 if a watermarked pixel is falsely detected and
otherw ise. The w aterm arked detection ratio is given by the
of ratio
the correctly detected
pixel to the sum of the watermarked pixels in the image.

7.3 AUTHENTICATION CHECK

Authentication check is a tw o level process. A first level decision on im age authentic

is taken by com paring the w aterm ark detection
theof
text im age w ith a pre specified
threshold T.

If the first level decision test indicates that the im age is som ehow altered but authe

second level decision test should be performThis

ed. test indicates whether the

alternations m ade on the im age are concentrated in certain regions (Malicious tam p
or one spread on the image (innocuous alternations).

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8. OTHER APPLICATIONS

1. To protect the intellectual property right of a music publisher who distributes

music scores over digital media.

Digital piracy is a serious concern to the musical industry.Customers receive

m usic in digital data form at and such data can be pirated and redistributed ve
easily. By using image score watermarking we can prevent this.

1. It canbe used for everything from sending e-m ail and storing m edical record
and legal contracts to conducting on-line transactions.

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9. ADVANTATGES

1. Robustness to high quality lossy image compression.

2. Automatic discrimination between malicious and innocuous manipulations.
3. Controllable visualdeterioration of the VS sequence by varying the watermark
embedding power.
4. Watermark embedding and detection can be performed in real time for digital
data.

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10. DISADVANTAGES

1. Frame independent watermark can be easily found by comparative analysis of all

image sequence frames and then could be easily added again to fake frames.

2. The detector should know the fram e num ber in order to perform authenticity che

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11. CONCLUSION

In these modern eras, visual surveillance system finds application in almost all fields
ranging from com m ercial to defense. The video data acquired
by VS system are form ing
vital evidence for several legal situations. So for such situations, the importance of
authenticating their content is very high. Cryptography and watermarking based
authenticating techniques are quite safe and efficient for
purpose
this and they are likely
to remain for quite for some while.

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12. REFERENCES

1. C. Ragazoni, G.Fabri, “Image Authentication Techniques for VS”, Proceedings

IEEE, October 2001.

2. “Digital Watermarking for protecting piracy”, Electronics for you, January 2003.

3. “Encryption wars”, IEEE Spectrum, April 2000.

4. M.M.Yeung and F.Mintzer “A watermark for digital image” IEEE Spectrum, April
2002.
5. www.ctr.columbia.edu

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