Abstract:
First and second patterns are formed on a substrate. A spatial offset between the patterns is determined, and stored for later use in authenticating the substrate. (One or both of the patterns may convey steganographic information. One pattern may be printed, while the other may be embossed.) A smartphone can sense these patterns, determine the spatial offset, and check whether the determined offset matches the earlier- stored offset, to judge whether the substrate is authentic. Another arrangement effects serialization of product packaging by use of paired patterns (at least one of which is typically a steganographic watermark pattern) applied in a manner causing a spatial offset between the patterns to progressively vary along a length of a printed web. Still other arrangements involve substrates conveying patterns that degrade over time, e.g., indicating freshness or pressurization condition. A great variety of other features and arrangements are also detailed.
Abstract:
A method and system of detecting colluders conducting a collusion attack including a minority-type collusion attack on a digital product includes the generation of codewords used as watermarks in the digital product. The inner code of the codewords is generated using permutations of rows in a Hadamard matrix and concatenating them together. A typical outer code of the codeword is the Reed Solomon code. An adaptive detector is able to accurately detect one of three or more colluders of a minority-type attack. Prior art schemes using an error correcting code-based watermarking mechanism with an inner code fail to detect colluders with a minority-type collusion attack which includes three colluders.
Abstract:
The invention relates to watermarking systems, which irregularly change the embedded watermark so as to avoid hacking the system by averaging-attacks. In averagingattacks, segments of the watermarked signal are accumulated. This causes the host signal to be cancelled out whereas the embedded watermark accumulates coherently. A watermark A thus determined is then subtracted by a hacker from the watermarked signal. This invention exploits the insight that the hacker does not know when the embedded watermark changes (from A to B, or from A to none). Accordingly, fragments of the hacked signal will contain the negative watermark -A being unintentionally embedded by the hacker. This causes the watermark detector to produce a correlation peak of opposite polarity. The invention resides in the detection of such a negative peak, and concluding therefrom that the signal has been tampered. The payload of the watermark is preserved. This provides the possibility to trace back the hacker.
Abstract:
A system for embedding and detecting digital watermarks, e.g., for copyright protection of digital content distributed via the Internet (170) or other channels. Different copies of content, such as audio data, are formed with a common watermark (CW), and different transaction watermarks (TW). Based on a user (180) transaction request, portions of the different copies of the content are assembled to provide a copy with a unique sequence of TWs associated with the user (180). A copy of content which is subsequently located can be analyzed to determine if it has been used in a collusion attack, where a pirate attempts to modify the watermarks, e.g., in an averaging or cut-and-splice attack. The CWs are provided in time-aligned intervals of the different copies of the content so they are not modified by the attack. Content from different web sites can be analyzed (312) by first determining if a particular CW is embedded in the content (315), and, if so, recovering the TW (322) to identify the unauthorized distributor.
Abstract:
A predetermined element of a matrix F produced by Fourier transform of the original image data P0 is specified (Step S122). An infinitesimal component DELTA F of a predetermined size is added to the real part FR or the imaginary part FI of the element (Steps S124, S126). By taking the symmetry of the Fourier spectrum into consideration, the infinitesimal component DELTA F is subtracted. A phase difference pattern W01 corresponding to the infinitesimal component DELTA F is embedded in the image formed by inverse-transforming the matrix to which the infinitesimal component DELTA F is added. The pattern cannot be taken out of the image in which the phase difference pattern is embedded or cannot be erased by an overwrite attack if the original image is concealed. Even if different watermark information is overwritten by a like algorithm on data in which an electronic watermark is embedded, the electronic watermark embedded in the original data can be taken out. A similar processing can be applied to the region obtained by wavelet transformation and comprising low-frequency components.
Abstract:
A watermarking procedure wherein each of a set of copies of the work has a slightly-modified form of a "baseline" watermark that is placed within a critical region of the data. The slight variations in the watermarks, however, are not perceptually visible and do not interfere with the work. If multiple persons collude to attempt to create an "illicit" copy of the work (i.e., a copy without a watermark), however, at least one of the modified watermarks is present in the copy, thereby identifying both the illicit copy and the copier.
Abstract:
This method of water-marking digital books with parameters comprises: - the formulation (56) for each parameter of a new character font on the basis of a pre-existing font, by creating at least one new code‑glyph pair, - the formulation (58) of a new text coded on the basis of a pre-existing coded text by replacing in the pre-existing coded text at least one code or group of codes of the pre-existing font making it possible to display a character or a combination of characters of the digital book by the code or the group of codes of the new font making it possible to display the graphically identical character or the combination of characters on any screen, this code or this group of codes of the new font comprising at least the code of the new code‑glyph pair, - the provision (64) in the guise of a watermarked digital book of the new coded text and of the new font.
Abstract:
In a combined video de-synchronization and compression method for processing a raw video stream comprising a first sequence of successive raw video frames in order to obtain a resulting processed video stream comprising a second sequence of coded frames, the successions of a first phase of selecting frames to be space and/or time-de-synchronized and allocating to each selected frame a category such as I-frame, P-frame, P-frame or F-frame (for "fractional") with reference to known motion compensated and transform hybrid coding standards such as MPEG-2 or the H-264 compression standard; and a second phase of a single one-stroke processing of said raw video stream consisting of processing successively the frames selected with a combined time de-synchronization and compression process using a common motion estimation processing step. The method is particularly suited to video fingerprinting by blind watermarking.
Abstract:
A detecting data processing apparatus determines whether one or more code words of a predetermined set of code words are present in a suspected version of a material item. The apparatus comprises a registration processor operable to associate samples of the suspected version with samples of a copy of the original material item, a recovery processor and a detection processor. The recovery processor is operable to generate a recovered code word by comparing the registered copy of the original and the suspect material items. The detection processor is operable to detect one or more code words from a correlation between the recovered code word and the code words from the set. The registration processor is operable to form at least one reduced-bandwidth-version of the material item and to associate the suspected version and the copy of the material item in accordance with a comparison between the reduced-bandwidth-versions of the suspected version and the original material item. The registration of the suspected version and the original version of the material item is typically required in order to improve a likelihood of correctly recovering a code word from the suspected version. For material items such as video recordings of motion picture films, a substantial number of samples may need to be associated in order to effect the registration process. As a result, the registration process may be time consuming or at least computationally difficult. However, by forming reduced-bandwidth-versions of the suspected version and the original version of the material items, a corresponding reduction in the time taken to perform the registration process is provide in accordance with the bandwidth reduction.