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IMAGE AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUES 1. INTRODUCTION This paper explores the various techniques used to authenticate the visual data recorded 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. Some practical issues must be taken in to account, in order to take full 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 is one of such issues. But visual data can be modified using sophisticated processing tools without leaving any visible trace of the modification. So digital or image data have no value as legal proof, since doubt would always exist that they had been intentionally tampered with to incriminate or exculpate the defendant. Besides, the video data can be created artificially by computerized techniques such as morphing. Therefore the true origin of the data must be indicated to use them as legal proof. By data authentication we mean here a procedure capable of ensuring that data have not been tampered with and of indicating their true origin. 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) 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 analyzing the sequence and generating an alarm whenever a suspicious situation is detected. Central unit also transmits the video sequences to an intervention centre such as security service provider, the police department or a security guard unit. Somewhere in the system the video sequence or some part of it may be stored and when needed the stored sequence can be used as a proof in front of court of law. If the stored digital video sequences have to be legally credible, some means must be envisaged to detect content tampering and reliably trace back to the data origin 3. AUTHENTICATION TECHNIQUES Authentication techniques are performed on visual data to indicate that the data is not a forgery; they should not damage visual quality of the video data. At the same time, these techniques must indicate the malicious modifications include removal or insertion of certain frames, change of faces of individual, time and background etc. Only a properly authenticated video data has got the value as legal proof. There are two major techniques for authenticating video data. They are as follows 1. Cryptographic Data Authentication through the joint use of
It is a straight forward way to provide video authentication, namely asymmetric key encryption and the digital Hash function.
Cameras calculate a digital summary (digest) of the video by means of hash function. Then they encrypt the digest with their private key, thus obtaining a signed digest which is transmitted to the central unit together with acquired sequences. This digest is used to prove data integrity or to trace back to their origin. Signed digest can only read by using public key of the camera. 2. Watermarking- based authentication
Watermarking data authentication is the modern approach to authenticate visual data by imperceptibly embedding a digital watermark signal on the data. Digital watermarking is the art and science of embedding copyright information in the original files. The information embedded is called watermarks . Digital watermarks are difficult to remove without noticeably degrading the content and are a covert means in situation where copyright fails to provide robustness. 4. CRYPTOGRAPHY Mounting concern over the new threats to privacy and security has lead to wide spread adoption of cryptography. Cryptography is the science of transforming documents. It has mainly two functions Encryption Decryption
The purpose of encryption is to render a document unreadable by all except those who authorize to read it. Cryptographers refer to the content of the original document as plain text. Plain text
The characteristics of watermarking system largely depend on its application scenario. For instant copy write protection application require that the watermark is robust against most common data manipulation,ie its presents can still be detected after nondestructive transformation of host document. Two approaches for watermarking data authentication are possible 1. Fragile watermarking 2. Robust watermarking Fragile watermarking refers to the case where watermark inserted within the data is lost or altered as soon as host data undergoes any modification. Watermark loss or alternation is taken as evidence that data has been tampered with, whereas the information contained within data used to demonstrate data origin In case of robust watermarking a summary of the candidate frame or video sequence is computed and is inserted within the video sequence. Information about the data origin is also with the summary. To prove data integrity the information conveyed by the watermark is recovered and compared with the actual content of the sequence. Their 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. 6.1.1 ROBUST VERSUS FRAGILE WATERMARK Semi fragile watermark is more mature than robust watermarking. Tamper localization is easier in fragile watermarking but it is difficult to distinguish between malicious and innocuous manipulations. Image authentication by means of robust watermarking is very promising with regards to the distinction between malicious and innocuous manipulations. The robustness of such technique depends on the number of bits that can be hidden in to the image. 6.2 REQIREMENTS OF WATERMARKING BASED VS DATA AUTHENTICATION
In order to highlight the peculiarities of VS data authentication. Let us consider the most common requirements for watermarking authentication techniques. 1. 2. 3. The authentication technique must not deteriorate the visual quality of data quality. The authentication technique should be able to identify any unauthorized processing acquired to visual data. The authentication technique should not consider innocuous manipulation, e.g., image compression and zooming, as valid authentication attacks.
The requirement on the deterioration of the visual quality of authenticated data is usually referred to us as invisibility constraint. The authentication technique must not deteriorate the visual quality of data. In this VS case however this is not crucial issue since VS do not exhibit a quality comparable that of visual data used in a media. VS data acquired by inexpensive, low quality devices. Visual analysis would possibly be carried out in a low court will focus on the semantic content 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 malicious processing occurred to the visual data. Besides the authentication technique should not consider innocuous manipulation Eg: Image compression or Zooming, as valid authentication techniques. When data compression is done in central unit the authentication is performed before compression and must survive it. To satisfy privacy complaints, some processing is done on the authenticated video, before it is stored. E.g. for obscuring the faces of persons 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 malicious when information that is important for a court law is removed. A solution to this problem is offered by authentication techniques capable of localizing manipulations. Once the modification is precisely localized, it will be up to the court law to decide if it is malicious of innocuous. 6.2.3 OTHER REQUIREMENTS The authentication checking procedure should be easily performed by authorized person and it should be difficult for non authorized person to forge an authenticated image. 6.2.4 VS SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS Since water marking is performed inside the video camera, water mark embedding should not have high computational demands and should be compressing resistant. To ensure data integrity, the video sequence is tied to the time and date it has been produced. The easiest way to detect the removal of one or more frames although alternation of the original frame order is to embed on each image a serial number before authenticating tools are applied. In fact such a number can neither be removed nor modified without affecting the authentication check, this making it impossible to remove or change the position of any frame of the sequence. By embedding in each frame the time and date of its creation in dissoluble link is created between the sequence content and the time instant, so that legal value of the sequence is completely preserved. The embedded water mark can be made to depend on the frame number and to bear time information. Frame exchange or substitution would thus be easily detected and acquisition time can be reliably extracted. In figure below a sketch of a simple VS system in which water marking is used to authenticate VS data in its raw form is given. Time, date and frame serial number are over written to every single frame before authentication. The authenticated sequence is possessed by a central unit for detecting pre-alarm situations and then is compressed for storage purposes. In this case authentication tools should be transparent to the image possessing algorithms applied by the central unit and resistant to compression. 7. WATERMARKING ALGORITHM
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 Ew(x) = 1if w(x) 0 and w(x) d(x) 0 otherwise
The false detection image has value 1 if a watermarked pixel is falsely detected and 0 otherwise. The watermarked detection ratio is given by the ratio of the correctly detected pixel to the sum of the watermarked pixels in the image.
7.3 AUTHENTICATION CHECK Authentication check is a two level process. A first level decision on image authenticity is taken by comparing the watermark detection of the text image with a pre specified threshold T. If the first level decision test indicates that the image is somehow altered but authentic, a second level decision test should be performed. This test indicates whether the alternations made on the image are concentrated in certain regions (Malicious tampering) or one spread on the image (innocuous alternations). 8. OTHER APPLICATIONS
Digital piracy is a serious concern to the musical industry. Customers receive music in digital data format and such data can be pirated and redistributed very easily. By using image score watermarking we can prevent this. 2. It can be used for everything from sending e-mail and storing medical records and legal contracts to conducting on-line transactions. 9. ADVANTATGES
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Robustness to high quality lossy image compression. Automatic discrimination between malicious and innocuous manipulations. Controllable visual deterioration of the VS sequence by varying the watermark embedding power. Watermark embedding and detection can be performed in real time for digital data. 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 frame number in order to perform authenticity check. 11. CONCLUSION In these modern eras, visual surveillance system finds application in almost all fields, ranging from commercial to defense. The video data acquired by VS system are forming 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 this purpose and they are likely to remain for quite for some while. 12. REFERENCES
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C. Ragazoni, G.Fabri, Image Authentication Techniques for VS, Proceedings of IEEE, October 2001. M.M.Yeung and F.Mintzer A watermark for digital image IEEE Spectrum, April 2002. Digital Watermarking for protecting piracy, Electronics for you, January 2003. Encryption wars, IEEE Spectrum, April 2000. www.ctr.columbia.edu www.seminartopics.info citeseer.nj.nec.com/wolfgang96watermark.html Seminar topic Courtesy : http://edufive.com/seminartopics.html
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