1

CHAPTER-I
INTRODUCTION

1.1. WATERMARKING HISTORY
The birth of paper watermarks took place in Fabrioano, Italy 700 years
ago. It was at first used to indicate the paper brand and production mill. Then
the use of water marks increased in Italy and in a little span over Europe
quickly. Primarily to get identified the brand of the paper watermarks were
used and its production mill, but afterwards, for the format of the paper it
served the purpose, strength and quality, and authenticity of the paper. Paper
marks were used as safety measures against as anti-counterfeiting on currency
and documents related to currencies by 18 century and still are used as security
features in currency today [9] in shown in Figure-1.1.

Fig.1.1: Watermark in Mark and Dollar Bank Notes

id9694312 pdfMachine by Broadgun Software - a great PDF writer! - a great PDF creator! - http://www.pdfmachine.com http://www.broadgun.com
2
The term water marks got its name at the end of the 18
th
century as it
resembles the effects of water on paper. Emil Hembrooke filed a patent in
1954 which was for identifying music works was the first example of
technology similar to digital water marking, Komatsu and Tominaga used the
term digital watermarking in 1988 first.

1.2. DEFINITION OF DIGITAL WATERMARK
Watermark is defined as a pattern in which bits are inserted into audio,
digital image, text file or video which detects the copyright information of the
file. These watermarks are the faintly visible imprints in the stationary and the
digital watermarks protect fully the intellectual property available in the digital
format.

1.3. DIGITAL WATERMARKING FEATURES
Affixing deeply metadata in multimedia content, digital water marking
techniques are useful even though, apart from availability of alternate
mechanisms like header of a digital file which stores meta-information. But
because of following features the digital watermarking technique is appealing
for the insertion of visible marks in video and images which further adds
information about audio in audio clip etc. [4, 9, 69].

3
1.3.1 Imperceptibility
The praisers of multimedia are of the opinion that watermarks
could not be altered as embedded watermarks are made without mistake
and they are statistically. Visible artifacts in still images are not created by
watermarks. The watermarks do not alter the bit rate of video or does not
allow any audible frequencies in audio signals.

1.3.2 Robustness
The use of digital watermarking is generally for identification of
ownership, so it is not subjected for any modification. The techniques of
digital watermarking is capable for supporting different levels of toughness
against changes if any, that can be made to the content of watermark
indifferent application. The digital watermarks degraded or be destroyed due
to receiving unwanted and harmful signals and geometric distortions like
symmetrical digital conversion, digital to analog conversion, cropping,
rotation, infection, scaling, dithering, a compression etc. of the content. On
the other hand if it used for the authentication of the content. Those should
easily broken or destroyed whenever, the content is modified for the reason of
modifying the content which are detected.


4
1.3.3. Inseparability
It is not possible either to separate or get back into the original
position of the watermark after embedment with watermark is complete.

1.3.4. Security
People, who are not unauthorized, are not allowed to detect and
modify the watermarks which have been fixed firmly in the cover signal by the
digital watermarking technique and the keys of watermark ensure that to
detect and modify watermark only authorized persons are permitted.

1.4. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN STEAGNOGRAPHY AND
CRYPTOGRAPHY

1.4.1. Steganography and Watermarking
Both Steganography and Watermarking are very old techniques for
concealed communication where watermarking came latter. Watermarking is
a descendent of a technique known as Steaganography.

A secret message is communicated to the other party which is hidden
within another and unrelated message in Steganography. Where as in
watermarking, one message is hidden within another but both the messages
are closely related to each other in some way. Steagangraphic methods are
5
generally not strong and fixed as the information which is hidden has got no
possibility of recovery after data manipulation. Complete contrast to it
watermarking as it plays upper hand in benefits of toughness against any
attacks even though the existence of hidden information are known. It is not
easy rather very very difficult to destroy the fixed watermark, even though
the algorithmic principle of watermarking method is a known to all.

1.4.2. Cryptography vs. Watermarking
Security is provided by using encryption and decryption in
cryptography. It is totally different technique from watermarking.
However, the seller cannot be helped by encryption to monitor.
However, a genuine customer handles the content after decryption leaving
the protection after decryption. In this case the Customer can make illegal
copies of the digital content. Watermarks can protect contents of
cryptography activities [34, 64].

Another difference is watermarks cannot be separated from covers in
which they are fixed, their contents are also protected and highly secured but
cryptography protects only content of the message.


6
The concept of breaking the system is different for cryptosystems and
watermarking systems. The attacker can read the secrete message when
cryptographic system is broken. But Breaking of a watermarking system has
two stages:
a). The watermarking can be detect by the attacker.
b). The attacker is able to read, modify or remove the hidden message.

1.5. CLASSIFICATION OF WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES
The classification of Digital Watermarking can be done on different
parameters in various ways. For different types of applications, different
types of watermarking are adopted which are listed as below:

1.5.1. Inserted Media Category
We can divide the techniques of watermarking on the basis of the
usage of Audio or Video, Text, Image.

1.5.2. Robust and Fragile Watermarking
No one can affect the watermark by modifications to the watermarked
content in Robust watermarking technique. Against to this when watermarking
content is modified or tampered watermark gets destroyed in fragile
watermarking technique.
7


1.5.3. Visible and Transparent Watermarking
Visible watermarks are only visible when the content is viewed and
they are embedded in visual content. We can not detect the transparent
watermarks as they are imperceptible by just viewing the digital content.
Figure-1.2 shows the difference visible and invisible watermarks.

1.5.4. Inserting Watermark Type
We can insert the watermark i n t he form of noise Tagged information
or Image.


1.2.a. Original Image 1.2.b. Watermark




1.2.c. Invisibly 1.2.d. Visibly
Watermarked Image Watermarked Image

Fig.1.2: Difference between Visible and Invisible Watermark.
8
1.5.5. Public and Private Watermarking
In public watermarking, the water is detected by the users of t h e
content. Private watermarking is not detected as the users are not authorized.
1.5.6. Watermarking of Asymmetric and Symmetric
There is no difference in techniques between Asymmetric watermarking
and a symmetric Key Watermarking users use the same keys for both fixed
and detecting watermarks.
1.5.7. Watermarking of Steganographic and Non-Steganographic
The users cannot identify generally a watermark in steganographic
watermarking technique. Whereas users are aware of the presence of watermarks
in non-steganographic watermarking. In fingerprinting applications the
Steganographic watermarking is used where as to deter piracy could use non-
steganographic watermarking techniques.
1.5.8. Processing Method
Technique of watermarking can be classified on the basis of spatial
domain, frequency domain, compression domain or hybrid for the insertion of
watermark used by us.

9
1.5.9. Necessary Data for Extraction
On the basis of necessary data of extraction watermark can by classified
into two categories:
Blind
Informed

Original document is not required during watermark detection process
in blind watermarking. Whereas in informed, original document is required.

1.6. CLASSIFICATION OF WATERMARKING ATTACKS
A wide variety of attacks both incidental and malicious should be
survived by a robust watermark. Some of the best known attacks are
introduced as under [57, 34].

1.6.1. Simple attacks
Attacks like waveform or noise are aiming at damaging the fixed
watermarks by manipulating the data as of whole watermark (watermark with
host data) without any effort to identify & isolate the watermark. For instance
addition of an offset, compression (MPEG, JPEG), with addition of noise,
filtering, cropping and same to the data conversion and Digital to analog.

10
1.6.2. Attacks of Detection-disabling
The attacks of synchronization are used to break the correlation. A
watermark detector finds it impossible or infeasible to recover the watermark.
It is done by the synchronization attacks mostly by geometric distortion like,
rotation, pixel permutations, shift in direction (for video), cropping, sub-
sampling, insert of pixel clusters or pixels, removal of pixels or pixel clusters
or gathering some geometric datas.

1.6.3. Ambiguity attack
Fake watermark data occur on attack, inserting fake watermark,
these fake watermarked data create some confusions. An inversion
attack which tries to discredit the authority of the watermark by fixing
one or several extra watermarks from which one cannot know the first
authoritative watermark.

1.6.4. Removal attacks
To discard only the watermark, to separate the watermark data
into host data and watermark to estimate the watermark or the host data
and to analyze the watermark data, the removable attacks are attempted
for the above fulfillment. Examples are collusion attacks, de-noising,
certain filter operations, or compression attacks using synthetic modeling of
11
the image. The tailored attacks to a specific watermarking scheme are also
included in this group.

It should be noteworthy that the transitions between the groups are
sometimes fuzzy and that some attacks do not clearly belong to one group.

1.7. EXISTING IMAGE OF WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES
Images are mainly focused by most watermarking research and
publications as the availability of many images on the WWW at no cost might
be the reason for there is a large need for watermarking image products which
need to be protected.

Watermarking methods differ only in the part or single aspect of three
topics:
Signal design
Embedding
Recovery

The Spatial domain, frequency domain, wavelet domain or
compression domain can be used by us to insert a watermark.

12
1.8. CATEGORIES OF WATERMARKING METHODS:


1.9. OUTLINE OF THE THESIS
Our proposed work mainly has four milestones. In first phase the cover
image is decomposed used DWT transform, in second phase noise density is
calculated to find out the sub bands with lowest noised density. Finally, the
watermark is fixed in the alternate side which has noise density.
1. Decomposing the image into its respective sub bands using Discrete
Wavelet Transform.
2. Estimation of Noise Density to select sub bands.
3. Embedding the water mark
4. Recovering the water mark.