TDW3431 Digital Watermarking Trimester 1, 2014/2015

Tutorial 7
(Lecture 7)

1. Discuss the importance of restricting watermark operations.

 In every application of watermarking, some people must have the ability to embed, detect,
and/or remove watermarks, whereas others must be restricted from performing some or all
of these actions.

 Secure watermarks are required to enforce these restrictions, and therefore it is useful to
analyze the security requirements of an application by specifying who is allowed to perform
which operations.

 For a given application, we divide the world into a number of different groups and assign a
set of permissions to each to determine the security properties required for the watermarking
system.

2. Differentiate private watermarking from public watermarking.

 Private Watermarking - The use of watermarking for any application in which a group called
the public is not authorized to perform any watermarking operations, including watermark
embedding, watermark detection and watermark removal.

 Public Watermarking - The use of watermarking for any application in which a group called
the public is authorized to detect the watermark, but is not authorized to perform any
other watermarking operations such as watermark embedding and watermark removal.

3. Briefly describe the assumptions to be made about the capabilities of the adversary when
judging the security of a watermark.

 If the Attacker Knows Nothing

The simplest assumption is that the adversary knows nothing about the watermarking
algorithms, and has no special tools (such as a watermark detector). Under these
circumstances, the adversary must rely on general knowledge of the weaknesses from which
most watermarking algorithms suffer.

 If the Attacker Has More Than One Watermarked Work

In some cases, it is possible for an adversary to obtain multiple watermarked works. The
adversary can often exploit this situation to remove watermarks, even when he or she does
not know the algorithm. Attacks that rely on possession of several watermarked works are
known as collusion attacks.

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 If the Attacker Knows the Algorithms

For systems that require a very high level of security, the assumption that the adversary knows
nothing about the watermarking algorithm is generally considered unsafe. It is often difficult
to keep the algorithms completely secret. Furthermore, if an algorithm is to be kept secret,
only small number researchers can be allowed to study it. This means that serious security
flaws can go undiscovered until after the system is deployed. For these reasons, the
cryptographic community advocates assuming that the adversary knows everything about
the algorithm, except one or more secret key.

 If the Attacker Has a Detector

In all of the previously discussed cases, we have assumed that despite what the adversary
knows about the watermarking algorithm, he or she does not have any special tools at his or
her disposal. If, however, the application dictates that the adversary must have permission to
perform some action, we must assume that he or she has the tools required for that action. In
this case, we must assume that the adversary has a watermark detector. Even if the
adversary knows nothing about the algorithm, access to a detector gives him or her
tremendous advantage in attacking the watermark.

4. How do cryptographic techniques help in solving the problem of unauthorized decoding?

 The problem of unauthorized decoding can be solved by a straightforward application of

cryptographic algorithms: we add a level of traditional encryption to the system, i.e., the
message is encrypted before it is embedded, and decrypted after it is detected.

 Such a system requires two keys: watermark key controls the watermarking layer; and
encryption key controls the encryption layer.

 The addition of an encryption layer ensures message security, i.e., that someone who detects
the watermark cannot decode its meaning.

 In certain systems, it can prevent the adversary from determining the presence of a watermark,
as an adversary that has the watermark key but does not have the cipher key would be unable
to determine the presence of watermark.

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5. The encryption and watermarking layers can be viewed as analogous to two layers of a networking
system: message and transport layers. Illustrate the two-layered watermarking system, and
identify the major responsibility of message and transport layers.

 Message layer is responsible for determining what messages to be transmitted over the
network, and

 Transport layer is responsible for ensuring that transmitted messages arrive uncorrupted.

6. Discuss the major advantages of adopting cryptographic tools in a two-layered watermarking

system.

 The addition of an encryption layer ensures message security, i.e., that someone who
detects the watermark cannot decode its meaning.

 In certain systems, it can prevent the adversary from determining the presence of a
watermark. Specifically, if a watermark system is designed to determine the presence of a
watermark by distinguishing between valid and invalid messages, it may be impossible to
identify valid messages without decrypting.

 Hence, an adversary that has the watermark key but does not have the cipher key would be
unable to determine the presence of watermark.

7. What is the limitation of appending the entire cover work to the embedded message before
computing a cryptographic signature? Suggest a method that can be used to solve with the
limitation.

 This approach would fail because the embedding process modifies the work, which makes
the signature invalid.

 To work around this problem, we might sign only a portion of the work, such as the lowest-
frequency components, rather than the entire work.

 If the embedding process is designed in such a way that it does not change this portion of the
work, the signature should still be valid after the watermark is embedded.

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8. Figure 1 shows the steps of embedding a watermark message along with a cryptographic
signature computed through a one-way hash of the watermark message concatenated with the
description of the cover work. Explain the corresponding watermark detection and watermark
validation processes using a diagram.

Figure 1: A method of linking watermarks to their cover works.

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The procedures of detecting and validating a watermark are as follows:

 Detect and decode the watermark, obtaining a message and a cryptographic signature.

 Construct the same description of the cover work that was constructed by sender.

 Compute the one-way hash of the watermark message concatenated with the description of
the cover work.

 Decode the cryptographic signature using sender’s public key.

 Compare the decoded signature against the hash of the message and cover work
description. If they are identical, the receiver can know that the sender composed this message
and embedded it in this work.