Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

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Future Generation Computer Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs

Dual watermarking framework for privacy protection and content

authentication of multimedia
∗
Nasir N. Hurrah a , Shabir A. Parah a , , Nazir A. Loan a , Javaid A. Sheikh a ,
Mohammad Elhoseny b , Khan Muhammad c
a
Post Graduate Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Technology, University of Kashmir, JK, 190006, India
b
Faculty of Computers and Information, Mansoura University, El Gomhouria St, Mansoura, Dakahlia 35516, Egypt
c
Intelligent Media Laboratory, Digital Contents Research Institute, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

highlights

• Dual watermarking based system for privacy protection and content authentication of multimedia.
• High robustness, offering threat identification and localization.
• Preservation of stego image’s quality via strong coefficient correlation between two selected neighborhood blocks.
• Highly robust to both singular and hybrid attacks.

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the current multimedia networked infrastructure, privacy breaches due to cyber-attacks result in huge
Received 20 July 2018 economic losses. Despite these threats there is ever increasing demand to share data over various insecure
Received in revised form 22 November 2018 networks for accomplishment of numerous tasks. In such a scenario there is a greater need to develop new
Accepted 15 December 2018
algorithms for strengthening the existing cybersecurity frameworks, ensure security, privacy, copyright
Available online 26 December 2018
protection and authentication of data. In this paper a new technique for copyright protection, data security
Keywords: and content authentication of multimedia images is presented. The copyright protection of the media is
Multimedia security taken care of by embedding a robust watermark using an efficient inter-block coefficient differencing
Cyber-attack algorithm and is proposed as Scheme I. Scheme II has been utilized to ensure both copyright protection,
Cybersecurity and content authentication. The authentication of the content has been ensured by embedding a fragile
Robustness
watermark in spatial domain while as copyright protection has been taken care of utilizing a robust
Copyright protection
watermark. In order to thwart an adversary and ensure that it has no access to actual embedded data, we
Content authentication
make use of a novel encryption algorithm in conjunction with Arnold transform to encrypt data prior to its
embedding. The experimental results reveal that the proposed framework offers high degree of robustness
against single/dual/triple attacks; with Normalized Correlation (NCC), more than or equal to 0.95. Besides,
the fragile watermark embedding makes the system capable of tamper detection and localization with
average BER more than 45% for all signal processing/geometric attacks. The average PSNR achieved for
both schemes is greater than 41 dB. A comparison of the proposed framework with various state-of-the-
art techniques demonstrate its effectiveness and superiority.
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Technology has made its way in almost every sector of life
like commerce, defense, banking, movie industry, health-sector
etc. Use of communication technology in the mentioned sectors
involves data collection/transfer 24 × 7, from millions of individu-
als and devices. In several complex state-of-art systems huge data
is shared in real time between different sensors and modules to
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: shabireltr@gmail.com (S.A. Parah).
carry out several automatic or monitored tasks [1,2]. Such data may
include health information, banking records and secret documents
in the form of images, text files, audio and videos, acquired through
various means and processed/stored by the different systems. The
information exchanged is usually sensitive, as it comprises of pri-
vate/secret data of individuals and organizations [3]. A minute
alteration could result in misleading information affecting decision
making of whole system. The presence of state-of-the-art multime-
dia editing tools are making it very easy to copy/edit and reproduce
various multimedia objects. Given to this fact, a large number
of data breaches caused due to various cyber-attacks have been
reported in recent years. In US alone the number of data breaches

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.12.036
0167-739X/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673
arouse from 1093 million in 2016 to 1579 million in 2017. The
total electronic records exposed in 2017 was found to be five time
greater than 2016 [4]. These breaches proved quite costly in many
cases as the companies lost a huge investment [5]. Electronic-
healthcare sector of late has been a target of various data breaches.
In July 2017 a cyberattack resulted in theft of medical images and
details of patient visits, related to more than 12,800 patients of
Arkansas Oral Facial Surgery Centre [6]. The Detroit health system
reported a patient data breach in October 2017 due a cybercriminal
theft of some email credentials wherein data of 18,470 patients
was stolen [7]. Similar other multiple data breaches have been
reported where privacy of millions of individuals has been exposed
and thereby resulting in huge loses to the concerned organiza-
tions due to legal actions enforced by law agencies [8–10]. The
healthcare organizations spend about $200 for every theft and
more than $2 million for every data breach incident. The overall
economic loss suffered by the US healthcare industry alone is
about $5.6 billion per year, for rectification and management of
lost and stolen records [11]. In India the scenario is no different
and according to a latest report from Motion Picture Distributors’
Association (India), the Indian film industry loses around 2.7 billion
dollars and over 60,000 jobs every year because of piracy [12]. A
latest study reveals that the revenue at box-office would increase
by 15% in case piracy is completely eliminated [13]. The online
platforms like dark net and overlay nets are the easy to access,
strong and unmonitored bases, for these hackers needing internet
access and few high configuration processors. Similarly, several
companies/agencies analyze the behavior of individuals sharing
their data through social network services (SNSs), and use number
techniques with the help of researchers to channelize their strate-
gies accordingly [14]. Besides movie and healthcare industries,
various data breaches have been reported in other industries [15–
17]. So there is need to ensure extreme data security in all these
areas. The focus of the cybersecurity techniques has been mainly
in the sectors like e-banking, e-commerce, defense, multimedia
industry, social media and e-healthcare. Cyber security is generally
achieved using various technologies like hashing, steganography,
watermarking and digital signatures etc. [18]. However, of late dig-
ital watermarking, has been proven, to be quite effective method
for copyright protection and content authentication along with
security and privacy of users.
Digital watermarking deals with hiding of secret data water-
mark) in some digital content which can be extracted only with
the accurate knowledge of embedding procedure and some secret
keys. Watermarking can be used by systems for applications like
e-healthcare, defense, e-commerce, smart cities etc. [19–21]. Wa-
termarking schemes are classified in many a ways [22]. Robust
and fragile watermarking techniques are required for copyright
protection and content authentication respectively. Some of the re-
cently reported fragile watermarking schemes capable of inform-
ing the receiver whether the information received is tempered or
not, could be seen in [23,24]. The fragile watermarking schemes,
usually implemented in spatial domain, offer least complexity and
high embedding capacity but are less resistant to common signal
processing attacks like compression [25]. Robust watermarking
schemes, usually implemented in transform domain, in contrast
focus on hiding the secret data in a cover media so that it could
be recovered even if cover media is attacked [26–28].
In this paper, a blind dual watermarking framework using DWT,
DCT, Arnold transform and a novel encryption algorithm has been
proposed for privacy protection and content authentication of
multimedia images. The block-based (DCT) transform avoids the
blocking effects usually suffered by most watermarking schemes.
This technique offers multiple options for the user to embed water-
mark as per various needs. Prior to embedding, Arnold transform
and a novel encryption technique are applied to the watermark,
655
to improve the security of the proposed watermarking framework.
The secret encrypted data bits of the watermark are embedded
into the DC coefficients of the image blocks, to achieve better
robustness against the most of the signal processing attacks. As the
proposed framework uses block processing procedure, it is flexible
to adopt any of the image compression standards.
The main contributions of the proposed work are summarized
as follows:
• Strong robustness is achieved by embedding the watermark
bits in a way which ensures optimal difference between
the modified coefficients. The difference between two co-
efficients is made to lie in four different zones where two
zones are used for watermark bit ‘1’ and the remaining two
are used to hold bit ‘0’. In addition, a sufficient guard band
is used to separate the zones after embedding the bit ‘0’
and ‘1’. Since ample guard band is kept between the zones,
any manipulation of the coefficients due to attacks fail to
shift the difference in the wrong zone. The performance
against geometric attacks is enhanced due to the application
of Arnold transform which in addition to the security ensures
that the neighboring bits of the watermark are embedded in
distant blocks. So the effect of geometric attacks which target
the particular portion of the image is minimized.
• The quality of the images is preserved by using only two coef-
ficients out of 64 coefficients in an 8 × 8 block for embedding.
Also an efficient coefficient correlation between two selected
neighborhood block coefficients, ensures least modification
done on the blocks due to embedding. The advantage of
using two separate pair of zones is that, the modification of
coefficients required for embedding watermark bit ‘1’ and
‘0’ is not too high. Thus ensuring good quality watermarked
image.
• To ensure the tamper identification and localization, a fragile
watermark is embedded in the spatial domain. Employing
proposed fragile watermarking algorithm ensures that any
minute tampering carried out on watermarked media effects
the hidden watermark drastically.
• The effectiveness of the technique is tested for hybrid attacks
in addition to singular attacks. This is important because, in
real time scenarios the attacks on the image are usually mul-
tiple. The proposed algorithm performs well for dual attacks
and even to most of the simultaneous triple attacks.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes
the related work. Watermark preparation has been discussed in
Section 3. Section 4 describes the watermark embedding and ex-
traction algorithms. Experimental results and discussion have been
presented in Section 5. The paper concludes with Section 6.
2. Related work
The rapid rise of information exchange through the internet
has given birth to several kind of cyber threats faced by the orga-
nizations working for the accomplishment of this data exchange.
To counter such threats, and ensure data security and integrity
during transit, a continuous research in multiple areas of relevant
technologies is on worldwide. Digital watermarking has been es-
tablished as one of the best techniques for realizing the multi-
ple goals of authentication, copyright protection and security of
the multimedia data being exchanged. Parah et al., have reported
an efficient data hiding system referred to StegNmark [29]. The
authors have combined steganography and fragile watermarking
techniques to ensure content authentication and early tamper
detection. At present, the hybrid transform domain techniques are
very popular due to their combined advantages in terms of imper-
ceptivity and robustness. It has been shown that the performance
656 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673
of DWT-based digital watermarking schemes could be improved
by using a hybrid combination of DWT and other transformation
domains [30]. In [31], a blind DWT–DCT watermarking scheme
has been proposed wherein two PN-sequences of scrambled bi-
nary watermark are embedded in mid frequency DCT coefficients
of the first-level DWT LL-sub-band, after their block-based DCT
transform is computed. In a similar way, multiple sub-bands and
multi-level DWT transform of cover image can be used to in-
sert the watermark information [32]. A similar DWT–DCT based
watermarking scheme has been proposed in [33], however the
scheme offers payload of only 256 bits. A joint DWT and DFT
based transform domain watermarking algorithm has been pro-
posed in [34]. The algorithm uses the decomposition property of
the transforms in order to embed the watermarks in the mid-
dle frequency coefficients. A similar watermarking scheme has
been implemented using combined DCT–DWT domain [30]. Haar
wavelets are used for embedding the secret data (watermark) in
the components of perceptual significance obtained from image
by employing block-based (DCT) transform. The application of DCT
on DWT coefficients considerably improves the performance of the
watermarking scheme as against using single transform technique
as reported in [35]. Here the watermark has been embedded in the
sub-bands obtained after application of DWT on the original cover
image. Several other transform domain techniques could be used
together to improve the two important factors — imperceptivity
and robustness. An IWT-SVD-MOACO scheme has been proposed
in [36] to improve the perceptual quality and robustness of water-
marking technique and avoid false position problems.
A watermarking technique is said to be efficient if it provides
security in addition to strong imperceptivity, robustness and em-
bedding capacity. This is needed in case the attacker successfully
cracks the extraction algorithm thereby obtaining the secret infor-
mation with no hindrance [37–40]. So there is need to secure the
watermark such that even if the attacker decodes the algorithm,
the secret information cannot be recovered in the original form.
A robust watermarking scheme for copyright protection, based on
chaotic map encryption has been proposed in [39]. Although the
technique provides good security to the watermark the impercep-
tivity and robustness to the geometric attacks is not satisfactorily.
The Chaos-based watermark encryption approach has also been
used for implementation of robust methods of zero-watermarking
in case of audio signals containing medical information [41]. A spa-
tial domain based imperceptible watermarking technique for color
images has been presented in [42]. The technique shows good im-
perceptivity but no provision is provided for security of the secret
information embedded. Further, the robustness against geometric
attacks is weak. A mixed modulation scheme has been proposed
for embedding a watermark encrypted using Arnold transform in
DCT domain [43]. Although imperceptivity with PSNR equal to 40
dB has been achieved the robustness against most of the attacks
demands further improvement. A blind frequency domain based
watermarking scheme using chaotic maps has been presented
in [44]. In the proposed scheme binary logo has been embedded
in the mid-band frequency components of the color image after
applying discrete wavelet transform on the image. Although, the
security of the scheme is very high, it has poor robustness against
various attacks and embedding capacity is also low. A fragile water-
marking algorithm for color images in lossless compressed and un-
compressed format is presented in [45]. Embedding of watermark
is achieved in coefficients of cover image after applying KLT. Ge-
netic algorithm and syndrome coding method is used to devise an
optimum embedding procedure. Although, the imperceptivity and
embedding capacity of this fragile watermarking scheme is high,
temper localization algorithm and a security procedure is needed
if algorithm fails to resist an attack. A region-adaptive semi-fragile
dual watermarking scheme has been proposed for embedding both
robust and fragile watermark [46]. After applying IWT on the
cover image the scheme involves splitting the transformed image
into three regions and embeds robust and fragile watermark in
two regions while keeping a no watermark region. The scheme
however is silent regarding security of watermark. Similar state-of
art-techniques have been reported for watermarking in the other
digital media like audio and video. A zero-watermarking scheme
for privacy protection while sharing audio signals meant in area of
telemedicine. Unlike image watermarking, the watermark is usu-
ally embedded in some separate key instead of medical signal to
avoid any wrong diagnosis because the audio signals are extremely
sensitive to any variation [4,41,47].
3. Watermark preperation
The security of the watermark is an important factor in both
the copyright protection and authentication applications. Usually
there are some chances for an unauthorized user to crack the
embedding algorithm by using a processor with high computa-
tional power and hence obtain the secret information (watermark)
hidden in some media. In order to increase the security of the
watermark, which is the secret information to be hidden in a
cover media, we use two different encryption techniques shown
in Fig. 1. At the first level, Arnold transform is used for carrying out
encryption on the watermark (W ) resulting in modification of its
spatial coordinates such that we obtain encrypted watermark as,
‘W A ’. Hence security of the watermark is ensured by using arnold
encryption with ‘K1 ’ number of iterations [48,49]. The parameter
‘K1 ’ is the only one parameter which acts as a secret key due to
which there are still chances for the attackers to decipher the
information after predicting the iteration count. So in order to
further strengthen the security of the secret information to a level
that is unbreakable, we use next level of encryption. This is taken
care of by using the proposed novel encryption technique which
changes the watermark information itself. In order to keep the
computational complexity at minimum possible level only a 32-bit
key is used for encrypting the transformed watermark at second
stage. The main secret key of 32-bits (K2 = a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 . . . a32 ) is
modified in such a manner that a single bit change in its content
will give the results that are totally meaningless. This 32-bit key
is expanded to form a 64-bit binary encoded sequence to encrypt
each row and column of the watermark. The steps involved in this
encryption process are described in Algorithm I. The watermark
(We ) obtained after two level encryption is embedded into the
cover images using proposed embedding techniques described in
Section 4.
4. Proposed watermarking technique
Proposed watermarking system provides two variants for copy-
right and authentication. The two variants are referred to as Scheme
I and Scheme II respectively. Scheme I is used for the generation of
robust watermarked images and as such could find applications
in the copyright protection and fingerprinting. We have used the
transform domain for embedding the watermarking data due to
excellent spatial-frequency localization of DWT and energy com-
paction property of DCT. These properties enable a watermarking
scheme to have high values of robustness and imperceptivity.
Scheme II is used when both copyright and authentication are
required. The first approach (Scheme I) utilizes only a single wa-
termark for copyright protection while as Scheme II utilizes two
watermarks; one for copyright protection and the other for authen-
tication purposes. Scheme I has been implemented in transform
domain and Scheme II utilizes both spatial as well as transform
domains. For both the schemes, to ensure security of the water-
marking two level encryption (as has been already discussed) is
applied prior to the embedding process. Table 1 shows a brief
description of different variants of the proposed system.
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 657

Table 1
Robust and Semi-Fragile schemes.
Proposed scheme(s)
Scheme I (Robust)
Scheme II (Semi-Fragile)
Description of the scheme
Utilizes a single watermark in transform domain and is used for the purpose of copyright protection. This scheme is applicable to
both gray scale as well as color images.
Utilizes two logos, one in transform domain and other one in spatial domain for achieving copyright protection and content
authentication: The color image is converted into three constituent Planes (RGB) and each plane is treated as a grayscale image.

4.1. Embedding algorithm
In the proposed work we have implemented an algorithm that
offers multiple options to the users for embedding a binary mes-
sage in a cover image. The transform domain embedding pro-
cess has been done in the mid-band frequency coefficients of the
transformed cover image. The processes for embedding watermark
for copyright protection is totally different from that of fragile
watermark embedding process which is done in spatial domain.
The generalized flow diagram for the two variants of the proposed
scheme has been shown in Fig. 2.
Both the schemes mentioned in Table 1 use different embed-
ding strategies. The watermark embedding for scheme I has been
discussed in Section 4.1.1 while as the watermark embedding in
Scheme II has been discussed in Section 4.1.2. The watermark
extraction from Scheme I and Scheme II have been discussed in
detail in Section 4.2. Some other variants which can be easily
achieved using the proposed scheme include embedding a single
fragile watermark in a gray/color image, embedding two robust
watermarks in a RGB color image or embedding a fragile or robust
watermark in a luminance component of color image.
4.1.1. Scheme I: Embedding robust watermark
In this subsection, the process of robust watermarking in a gray-
scale image is explained in detail. The same process can be used for
color images to embed watermark in one of its components. The
block diagram of this scheme can be thought to be same as Fig. 2
with the blocks between points ‘A’ & ‘C’ and ‘D’ & ‘F’ removed. The
modification is such that the fragile channel is not used while we
embed robust watermark and the input cover image is gray-scale.
The watermark embedding process starts with various inputs to
the embedder such as a watermark image W (which generally is
658 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Fig. 1. Flow diagram for encrypting watermark(s) before embedding stage.

Fig. 2. Flow diagram for embedding robust and/or fragile watermark(s).

a binary logo (s) of size P × Q) and a cover image of size M ×
N. The cover image is first subjected to global DWT. In order to
avoid the complexity issues posed by multilevel DWT only one
level DWT is used in the proposed technique. Haar wavelets have
been employed to obtain the significant perceptual components
of the image for embedding watermark. The stable nature of the
approximate sub-band (LL) due its possession of most of the energy
of an image as compared to other three sub-bands makes it is
more difficult to get changed by attacks hence suitable for robust
watermarking. This feature makes the approximate sub-band most
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673
suitable candidate for robust watermark insertion. The steps of
robust watermark embedding process are described as follows:
Step 1: Before embedding, the watermark data is encrypted as
described in Section 3.
Step 2: If color image is used then it is divided into its constituent
planes by the pre-processing unit and one of the three constituent
planes is chosen for embedding robust watermark. Single level
DWT is directly applied on the input gray-scale image, due to
which image gets decomposed into four sub-bands; LL, LH, HL and
HL, each of size M/2 × N/2. Since, original real image adjacent
pixels are highly correlated, the first-level LL sub-band which is
approximation coefficients matrix, gives the close approximation
of the real image and HL, LH, and HH sub-bands are set of detail
coefficients.
Step 3: The LL sub-band selected for data embedding is decom-
posed into 8 × 8 non-overlapping blocks. Thus the total no. of 8
× 8 blocks obtained from LL sub-band (after 1L DWT) is given by
Eq. (1).
M /2 × N /2
n=
8×8
Each of the 8 × 8 block is further divided into four sub-blocks (Bxr :
r = 1, 2, 3, 4 and x = 1,2, 3, . . . . n). The dimensions of each of these
sub blocks are 4 × 4. Thus total number of sub blocks obtained from
a given block of size 8 × 8 is 4. It is pertinent to mention that total
number of bits that could be embedded in an image is 4n. Where n
is computed using Eq. (1).
Step 4: DCT is performed on each of the 4 × 4 block to produce
corresponding DCT-transformed blocks B′ 1 , B′ 2 , B′ 3 and B′ 4 .
Step 5: The encrypted watermark sequence bits WF are embedded
in the DCT transformed sub-blocks by modifying the difference
between the two pre-defined DCT coefficients selected from a pair
of 4 × 4 adjacent blocks. Table 2 shows the procedure of assigning
pair of sub-blocks out of four sub-blocks within an 8 × 8 block (Bx ).
The difference (D) between a selected pair of DCT coefficients
from sub blocks Ba and Bb is defined in Eq. (2).
D = Ba (i, j) − Bb (l, m)
where Ba (i, j) and Bb (l, m) are the DCT coefficients chosen within
a sub-block having different coordinates. The embedding will pro-
duce two transformed and modified (by watermarking) sub-blocks
Ba ′ and Bb ′ as per the procedure shown in Fig. 3. The parameters like
µ, δ and α are the initial parameters that are very sensitive to even
a fractional change in their values. Alfa (α ) is the strength of wa-
termark embedding on which the imperceptivity and robustness
is dependent. Watermark embedding has been done in such a way
that the difference (D) is made to lie in either of four different zones
defined in Fig. 3.
The zone occupied by the D is determined by the actual differ-
ence between two coefficients under comparison and the water-
mark bit to be embedded. For embedding the bit ‘0’ the difference
‘D’ is made to lie in the Zone 2 or Zone 4. Similarly, for embedding
the bit ‘1’ the difference ‘D’ is made to lie in the Zone 1 or Zone 3.
Step 6: Perform IDCT transform of the modified image blocks (Ba ′
and Bb ′ ).
Step 7: Perform the IDWT of the modified approximation coeffi-
cients LL* and the original detail coefficients (HL, LH, and HH sub-
bands).
Step 8: Construct the watermarked image I ′ by performing several
post-processing steps which involve some post conditioning of
image, conversions between color/gray formats, modification of
pixel values by adding of 128 to each element so that the pixel
intensities lie in the range from 0 to 255, and combining image
planes in case of RGB image.
659
4.1.2. Scheme II: Embedding a robust and fragile watermark
In this scheme both robust and fragile watermarks are embed-
ded in a color image. The block diagram of this scheme is the
complete flow diagram that has been shown in Fig. 2, which is
capable of embedding a robust and fragile watermark. The robust
watermark is embedded as per the steps described in scheme I
while fragile watermarking steps are described in this subsection.
This scheme can be used for both gray scale and color images.
The modification in Fig. 2 for such a case is that robust channel
is not used when fragile watermark is embedded. For embedding
a fragile watermark in color images one of the planes (RGB) has
to be chosen. The block diagram of scheme II could be thought
to be same as Fig. 2 with the blocks between point ‘A’& ‘B’ and
‘E’ & ‘D’ removed. The watermark embedding process involves
hiding an encrypted watermark into a cover image. The fragile
watermark embedding involves embedding the watermark bit in
a block twice for achieving tamper detection and localization. This
is done by embedding the bit first in whole block (Bxy ) barring
a predefined pixel, Bxy (g, h). The pixel Bxy (g, h) is then used
for embedding duplicate version of the same watermark bit. The
fragile watermark is embedded using Algorithm II.
(1)
4.2. Watermark extraction
The proposed watermarking scheme is the blind because it
does not require the original image at the extraction stage. The
extraction process starts with watermarked image which is firstly
processed for necessary extraction of image components in which
watermark is embedded. The processed image is put forward to
the extraction step, wherein an extraction algorithm which is
different for robust watermark extraction and fragile one is used.
The process of extracting robust watermark has been discussed
in Section 4.2.1 while as that for extracting fragile watermark has
been presented in Section 4.2.2.
4.2.1. Robust watermark extraction
The watermark extraction process goes through almost similar
steps in the reverse order as the embedding process. The extrac-
tion process is in analogy with embedding up to the step 3, and
uses the 4 × 4 sub-blocks respectively. The difference between
(2) two predefined neighboring block DCT coefficients results into a
zone for which watermark bit is defined. After pre-processing, the
received image is transformed using 1-level 2D discrete wavelet
transform. The LL sub-band approximation coefficients are se-
lected and further divided into the 4 × 4 blocks. The 4 × 4 blocks
undergo DCT transform. The DCT coefficients are obtained from
which watermark bits are extracted according to the values of the
resulting differences between two pre-defined coefficients within
a sub-block. As defined during the embedding, if the difference
lies within a particular zone the decision is made about whether
the bit is ‘0’ or ‘1’. Even if the watermarked image undergoes an
attack or signal processing operations, the proposed scheme is
able to extract well recognizable copy of the watermark (robust
watermark) whose quality depends on the strength of the attacks.
4.2.2. Fragile watermark extraction
The extraction process used in fragile watermarking is inverse
of the corresponding embedding process. After doing some nec-
essary pre-processing of the watermarked image the resulting
watermark logo is obtained from the image in spatial domain. For
an arbitrary block B̂xy (say first block) of the watermarked image
plane (IM ) with dimension’s 8 × 8 the watermark bit is extracted
using Algorithm III.
For localization of tampering the two extracted watermark bits
We (a) and WLSB (a) are compared. If they are same that means the
block is not tampered and is represented with dark color block
(i.e. B̂xy = 0) otherwise it is tampered represented by white block
(B̂xy = 1). This way we are able to localize the tamper at block level
and some example of tamper localization are shown in Fig. 17.
660 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Fig. 3. Pictorial view of robust watermark embedding algorithm.

 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 661

Table 2
Procedure for assigning 4 × 4 sub-blocks in an 8 × 8 block.
1st Four Sub-blocks 2nd Four Sub-blocks xth Four Sub-blocks
Ba = B′ 11 and Bb = B′ 12 Ba = B′ 21 and Bb = B′ 22 – Ba = B′ x1 and Bb = B′ x2
Ba = B′ 12 and Bb = B′ 13 Ba = B′ 22 and Bb = B′ 23 – Ba = B′ x2 and Bb = B′ x3
Ba = B′ 13 and Bb = B′ 14 Ba = B′ 23 and Bb = B′ 24 – Ba = B′ x3 and Bb = B′ x4
Ba = B′ 14 and Bb = B′ 11 Ba = B′ 24 and Bb = B′ 21 – Ba = B′ x4 and Bb = B′ x1

5. Experimental results Correct Ratio (BCR), defined as:

BCR (%) = [1 − BER]×100 (4)

In this section, we present the subjective and objective qual-
ity metrics obtained during the experimental evaluation of the
proposed algorithm. Several standard color and gray scale cover
images like Lena, Baboon, Boat, Peppers, Plane, etc. are used for
evaluation and experimentation of the proposed scheme. Some of
the test images of size 512 × 512 and watermarks used for the
analysis are shown in Fig. 4. The two main evaluation parameters to
describe performance of a watermarking scheme are imperceptiv-
ity and robustness. The imperceptivity of a watermarking scheme
may be defined as measure of similarity between the original im-
age and watermarked image. To evaluate the imperceptivity of the
watermarked image, the parameter PSNR and SSIM [50] are used.
Robustness describes the resistance of the watermarking scheme
against image manipulations due to attacks such as filtering, crop-
ping, rotation, noise attack, and so on. The robustness is usually
measured in terms of NCC and BER with respect to the original
watermark and the extracted watermark in the presence of signal
processing attacks. Similarly, parameters like Bit error rate (BER),
Normalized Cross correlation (NCC), Bits Correctly Extracted (BCE)
and Bit-Correct Ratio (BCR) are used for testing the robustness.
The quantitative metric that is commonly used at the extraction
stage to evaluate the performance of the watermarking scheme is
the Bit Error Rate (BER), which is calculated as follows:
⎡ ⎤
∑P −1 Q −1
∑ obtained. The unity value of NCC and zero value of BER proves that
BER (%) = 1/PQ ⎣ W (x, y) ⊕ Ŵ (x, y)⎦ ×100
x=0 y=0
where (x, y) gives the coordinates of a pixel such that W (x,
y) and Ŵ (x, y) are the pixel values of the original image and
extracted image respectively at location (x, y). The value of BER
should be as low as possible and if BER converges to zero then
the original watermark is said to be completely recovered. Some
of the techniques analyze robustness in terms of the parameter Bit
The closer the value of NCC to unity the more is the robustness
of the watermarking system. The BCE parameter has been used in
some cases to check the robustness of a watermarking scheme. BCE
stands for the number of Bits Correctly Extracted. BCE is given by
BCE = Wo − We (5)
where ‘Wo’ (Wo = P × Q ) is the total number of bits embedded
in a watermark and ‘We’ gives the total number of bits in error at
extraction step.
5.1. Imperceptivity analysis
In this section, the perceptual quality of the watermarked im-
ages is presented and the results are thoroughly analyzed. For
evaluating the perceptual quality of the watermarked image the
two quality metrics adopted in this work are SSIM and PSNR.
5.1.1. Imperceptivity analysis for Scheme I
In order to analyze the quality metrics of the proposed ro-
bust watermarking scheme the subjective and objective analysis
is carried out. Fig. 5 shows the extracted watermarks from the
different watermarked images under no attack condition. High
quality watermarked images with PSNR greater than 40 dB are
(3) the watermark is extracted without an error under no attack.
The proposed technique has been compared with Hu et al. [43]
for gray scale images of size 512 × 512 and watermark size 64 ×
64 and the results are shown in Fig. 6.
A similar comparison has been done with [33] by embedding
256 bits of watermark in a 512 × 512 gray scale image and the
results have been shown in Fig. 7. For this case blocks used for
embedding are taken with the size 16 × 16 due to which a very
high imperceptivity is achieved.
662 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Fig. 4. Some of the gray scale images, color images and the watermarks used in proposed scheme(s).

Fig. 5. Watermarked images, extracted watermarks and corresponding metrics under no attack at α = 36.

From Figs. 6 and 7 it is clear that the proposed watermarking
scheme offers better imperceptivity than the schemes under com-
parison and the watermark is extracted without any error at the
authorized receiver.
5.1.2. Imperceptivity analysis for Scheme II
Some of the watermarked images and the corresponding ex-
tracted watermarks in case of Scheme II have been shown in Fig. 8
under no attack. As can be seen from the figure, highly impercep-
tible watermarked images are obtained even after embedding two
watermarks. Fig. 9 shows the average PSNR values of different 512
× 512 color images after embedding two watermark logos (64 ×
64) for varied values of embedding factor ranging from 5 to 75. The
imperceptivity remains at a sufficient level up to embedding factor
of 75 because PSNR remains above 36 dB and perceptual quality is
maintained. In the proposed scheme(s) ‘α ’ has been set with the
value of 36.
As evident from Fig. 9, quality of the watermarked image can
be varied to a desirable range by just varying the embedding factor
(α ). The applications which involve the authenticity of the data
need a fragile watermark to be embedded in the cover image.
When the watermarked image is attacked, the recipient does not
extract the watermark in its original form. The proposed fragile
watermarking scheme attains a PSNR value around 67 dB for a 64
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 663

Fig. 6. Imperceptivity Comparison with different gray scale images against Hu et al. [43].

Fig. 7. Imperceptivity comparison with different gray scale images against Banoraira [33].

× 64 watermark embedded in one of the components of a color
image with block size 8 × 8. The embedding capacity and PSNR
achieved on embedding of the fragile watermark in a color image
component with respect to different block sizes is shown in the
Table 3.
5.2. Robustness and fragility analysis
For the cases like copyright protection the robustness of a
watermarking scheme is the most important factor. Robustness
underscores the capability of a watermarking system to withstand
various operations/attacks. In this section the watermarked image
is subjected to several attacks and the results hence recorded
are analyzed for robustness. For the said purpose operations like
filtering, noise addition, compression, geometric attacks, etc. have
been carried out on the watermarked image. We have tested the
watermarked images for singular and simultaneous attacks. NCC
and BER are the two objective metrics which have been used for
evaluation of the robustness of the proposed scheme. Also, we have
used parameters like BCE and BCR at many places for comparison
purposes. The objective results hence obtained have been recorded
in various tables and subjective results in various figures. The
results hence achieved have been compared with some already
existing state of art techniques to prove the effectiveness of the
proposed scheme.
5.2.1. Robustness analysis of Scheme I
As mentioned the Scheme I involves embedding a robust water-
mark in a grayscale image. Fig. 10 shows various quality metrics
achieved for the proposed scheme when subjected to different
attacks.
From Fig. 10, it is clear that the proposed watermarking al-
gorithm is robust against various attacks carried out on the wa-
termarked Lena. The proposed scheme could be seen completely
robust to Gaussian Low pass filtering while as BER values of 0.2 to
7% could be seen for various attacks. One of the most important
attributes of the proposed scheme is it high degree of robustness
to JPEG. As seen, for a very low quality factor of 20, our scheme only
reports a BER of 0.2%. The proposed scheme has been compared for
JPEG compression with [33] and the objective metrics have been
plotted in Fig. 11.
664 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Fig. 8. Watermarked images and extracted watermarks under no attack at α = 36.

Fig. 9. Imperceptivity against varying Embedding factor (α ).

Table 3
Average PSNR and embedding capacity achieved with different block sizes for fragile component.
Cover image size Watermark size Block size used Embedding capacity (bits) PSNR (dB)
512 64 × 64 8×8 4096 (212 ) 67.17
512 128 × 128 4×4 16 384 (214 ) 59.20
512 256 × 256 2×2 65 536 (216 ) 52.11

It is clear from the comparison results shown in Fig. 11 that the
proposed scheme outperforms the technique under comparison.
Similarly, for the case of 512 × 512 gray scale images and 64 × 64
watermark logo the proposed scheme has been compared with Hu
et al. [43]. The BER comparison results are shown in Table 4.
From Table 4, it is clear that the proposed watermarking al-
gorithm outperforms the scheme under comparison in terms of
robustness. The proposed scheme shows higher robustness against
all of the attacks except JPEG compression below quality factor
of 30.
5.2.2. Robustness analysis for Scheme II
For both copyright and authentication purposes a robust and
a fragile watermark has been embedded in a color image. This
section presents the results, when watermarked images obtained
using Scheme II, are subjected to different signal processing and
geometric attacks.
A. Robustness Analysis for Singular Attacks
The proposed watermarking scheme has been tested for many
image processing attacks taken one at a time in order to evaluate
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 665

Fig. 10. Extracted watermarks and corresponding NCC and BER metrics at α = 35 for Lena image.

Fig. 11. Comparison of different images in terms BCR for JPEG compression against Banoraira [33].

Table 4 the rotated watermarked image and watermark have been shown
Average BER (in percentage) comparison for different attacks. at an embedding factor 36.
Attack type Hu et al. [43] Proposed
None 0 0 • Filtering/noise attacks The performance of the proposed
JPEG/QF = 60 0 0 scheme has been analyzed for the filtering attacks like Me-
JPEG/QF = 30 NA 0 dian filtering (MF), Average filtering (AF), Low pass filtering
JPEG/QF = 20 0.03 0.30
JPEG2000/CR = 4 0.07 0
(LPF) and Weiner filtering (WF) and the results have been
JPEG2000/CR = 8 3.22 0.39 shown in Table 5. During the transmission of a watermarked
Gaussian noise @0.001 1.06 0.68 signal and other circuit operations, there are high chances of
Salt-and-Pepper noise @1% 8.72 8.05 noise addition to the signal. Some of the prominent noises
3 × 3 median filter 7.52 5.98
3 × 3 Gaussian LPF 0.34 0.04
involved are Gaussian noise (GN), Speckle noise (SN), Salt and
Scaling recovery 3.08 2.03 Pepper noise (S & P), Poisson noise (PN) etc. The performance
Rotation recovery (45◦ ) 11.82 8.58 of the proposed scheme has been evaluated against these
Brightening (+20) 0 0 noises and the results have been recorded in Table 5.
Darkening (−20) 0.59 0
• Rotation attack: The robustness of the watermark images has
been analyzed by rotating the watermarked image through
different angles. We have carried out rotation attack of varied
its performance. The three types of geometric attacks used to test degrees (1◦ –45◦ ) on the watermarked images. The extracted
our scheme are rotation, scaling and cropping. For analysis against watermarks have been shown in Fig. 12.
compression the effect of JPEG compression has been analyzed. • Scaling and cropping: Like rotation attack the proposed
Similarly, various filtering attacks and noise additions are per- scheme has been evaluated for other geometric attacks like
formed on the watermarked images. It is pertinent to mention that resizing and cropping. The watermarked image is tested for
666 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673
crop by percentages of 25% and 50% and results are recorded
in Table 5. Similarly, the scaling of watermarked image is
done by resizing the image by 400%. The results thus obtained
have been shown in Fig. 13.
• Compression attacks: For a good watermarking algorithm, it
is necessary that it survives the compression process effec-
tively such that the retrieval of the watermark is easily possi-
ble at the extraction step. Fig. 13 shows the results obtained,
after watermarked images are compressed with quality factor
of 40 using JPEG compression.
It is evident from Table 5 that BER obtained is of small value and
NCC value is high in case of robust logos embedded which implies
that our system is resilient to these attacks. This claim is authen-
ticated with BER of less than 4% for extracted robust watermarks
and BER of greater than 40% for extracted fragile watermarks.
From Figs. 12 and 13, it is clear that the proposed Scheme II
robust watermark shows high resilience against JPEG compression
and fragile watermark watermarks are totally destroyed thereby
concluding that the data received has been tampered during tran-
sit. And as such a recognizable robust watermark is extracted even
after compression quality factor of 40. So in all it can be concluded
that the proposed technique is highly robust against all of the
geometric, filtering, noise and compression attacks. The results
in Fig. 12, Fig. 13 and Table 5 are sufficient to prove our claim for
the Scheme II.
B. Robustness Analysis for Combined Attacks
Due to the fact that in real case scenario the watermarked
images undergo multiple attacks at a time instead of singular
attacks the proposed watermarking algorithm has been evaluated
for simultaneous multiple attacks. Different attacks were enforced
on the watermarked images one after other and the results have
been shown in Table 6. For better analysis the proposed scheme has
been subjected to even three continuous attacks to claim working
of proposed scheme in a real case scenario.
From Table 6, it is evident that the proposed watermarking
algorithm shows high robustness even against hybrid attacks. After
almost all of attacks including geometric, noise, filtering and other
signal processing operations are applied in combination, recog-
nizable robust watermarks are retrieved. This proves the claim
that proposed scheme shows high level of robustness to combined
attacks. The BER of greater than 55% shows weak resistance of
fragile watermark as such temper detection is easily achieved.
C. Comparative Analysis of Scheme II
The proposed robust watermarking technique is compared with
some state of art algorithms already proposed in literature. The
proposed scheme is compared against Abrahim [42] for a color
image of size 512 × 512 and watermark of size 64 × 64. The
comparison against the JPEG compression attack has been plotted
in Fig. 14 to show the effect on robust watermark.
Similarly, the comparison results of robust watermark against
various attacks have been plotted against [42] in Fig. 15. In Fig. 15
BCE parameter is used to analyze the number of bits correctly
extracted between the two techniques under comparison. As ev-
ident from the figure the number of bits correctly extracted using
proposed scheme are more for every attack under the consider-
ation. In case of cropping at 75% the proposed scheme performs
well as compared to scheme under comparison where watermark
is almost destroyed with only 1000 out of 4096 bits extracted
correctly.
The comparison results in terms of NCC and BER are presented
in the Table 7. It could be seen that even after embedding the two
watermarks (fragile and robust) the proposed scheme shows better
results in terms of average NCC and BER than [42].
The proposed scheme II has been also compared with Ghe-
bleh [44] for the color image of size 512 × 512 and watermark
size of 96 × 36. The PSNR of 43.28 is obtained for the RGB Lena
image. The watermarks extracted using proposed scheme and the
BER comparison results have been shown in Fig. 16.
5.3. Temper localization
One of the desired features of a watermarking system is that it
should be able to predict and localize the nature of attacks acting
on the watermarked image. Usually many intruders replace the
portions of an image with portions of different image so that a
different message is conveyed. So a watermarking system should
have the capability of correctly locating the attacked portions of
image. The results of the proposed scheme after different forgery
attacks on the watermarked image are shown in Fig. 17. As seen
from the results the proposed scheme can correctly locate the
tempered portions of the watermarked image.
5.4. Security analysis
The security strength of an encryption and cryptographic tech-
nique depends on secret keys as described by Kirchhoff’s principle
[28]. Since, the cryptosystem is dependent only on the secret keys,
therefore, it should be nearly impossible to retrieve the informa-
tion without the exact secret keys. So, the strength of security of an
encryption technique is dependent on sensitivity of the keys used
in the algorithm. The proposed watermarking system uses differ-
ent keys at the different stages of watermark generation discussed
in Section 3. While employing different keys for enhancing security
of the watermarking algorithm, the complexity has been taken into
consideration. Although, high levels of security can be achieved by
using keys with large key space, the complexity of computations
to perform encryption also increase proportionally. So, an optimal
key space is used in the present work such that both key space and
sensitivity requirements are met up to an efficient level. There are
at least two sub-keys used during encryption: 6-bit key for Arnold
encryption and 32-bit key for second level of novel encryption. The
final master key length becomes 38 bits such that there can be up
to 238 keys possible. Hence a large computation power and time is
required for an adversary to obtain the correct key. Further, as the
proposed watermarking system deals with images, a continuous
human monitoring is required for deciding whether the decrypted
watermark is meaningful or not. Adding all these factors it becomes
almost impossible to crack into the algorithm without accurate
information about different keys.
5.4.1. Key sensitivity analysis
The keys used in the proposed algorithm are very sensitive to
any change. Even a single bit change in the key will give the results
that are totally meaningless. For analyzing the sensitivity of the
key used in the proposed algorithm a least possible change in the
master key is done and the decrypted message is extracted.
In the proposed algorithm, a master key ‘K’ comprising of two
sub-keys K1 and K2 , of length 6-bit and 32-bit respectively. Let
us suppose the value of K2 used at encryption is 865 765 757 and
if a change of just one bit is done such that value of K2 used at
extraction is K2 ′ = 865 765 756. This change is analyzed with
K1 kept unchanged and the results are depicted in upper four
columns of Fig. 18. The Number of Pixels Change Rate (NPCR) is
used to measure the effect of changing the key on the encrypted
watermark by the proposed encryption algorithm. The parameter
NPCR is usually used to calculate the percentage of dissimilar pixel
values between two images [51]. As there are only two values
(0 and 1) in a binary watermark so an NCPR of above 50% on
a single bit key change shows strength of encryption algorithm.
Similarly, keeping K2 unchanged and changing K1 by one bit, say
from K1 = 55 at encryption to K1′ = 56 at extraction, sensitivity
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 667

Table 5
Objective metrics of robust and fragile watermarks for cropping, filtering and noise attacks.
Attacks Watermark type Peppers Lena Aeroplane Medical
BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC
Robust 7.25 1 8.20 0.99 8.45 0.99 6.50 1
Crop upper left (25%)
Fragile 22.14 0.75 25.41 0.72 24.74 0.73 24.20 0.70

Robust 7.27 0.99 8.22 0.98 8.65 0.99 8.45 0.99

Crop lower right (25%)
Fragile 22.88 0.74 25.88 0.73 23.31 0.73 24.54 0.72

Robust 14.59 0.98 16.43 0.97 18.07 0.96 16.62 0.97

Crop lower half (50%)
Fragile 45.16 0.49 50.21 0.45 62.08 0.40 59.82 0.43

Robust 1.04 0.99 2.34 0.98 1.90 0.98 0.09 0.99

Median filter [3,3]
Fragile 45.62 0.57 47.97 0.52 42.04 0.54 40.16 0.60

Robust 3.02 0.97 4.17 0.96 4.44 0.96 0.19 0.99

Low pass filter
Fragile 48.09 0.50 49.41 0.50 49.37 0.51 48.12 0.52

Robust 2.97 0.97 4.17 0.96 5.41 0.95 0.17 0.99

Average filter [3,3]
Fragile 50.02 0.51 47.97 0.50 49.70 0.51 48.21 0.54

Robust 0.65 0.99 1.56 0.98 2.27 0.98 0.12 0.99

Weiner filter [3,3]
Fragile 49.58 0.50 49.92 0.50 51.90 0.51 48.24 0.55

Robust 5.49 0.95 5.27 0.95 4.66 0.95 5.59 0.95

S & P noise (0.01)
Fragile 36.85 0.72 33.80 0.76 39.44 0.70 37.44 0.72

Robust 0.43 0.99 0.07 0.99 0.09 0.99 0.19 0.99

Gaussian noise (0.001)
Fragile 49.95 0.49 50.26 0.49 51.70 0.48 48.53 0.51

Robust 2.27 0.98 4.02 0.96 3.80 0.97 3.24 0.97

Speckle noise (0.01)
Fragile 47.68 0.54 49.63 0.50 51.46 0.48 51.22 0.49

Robust 2.63 0.97 3.14 0.97 2.82 0.97 2.88 0.97

Poisson noise (0.01)
Fragile 49.56 0.50 49.87 0.50 50.07 0.49 50.80 0.49

Fig. 12. Watermarked images and extracted watermarks after rotation attacks (θ = 15◦ ).

is checked. The decrypted logos extracted after this least possible
alteration corresponding to K1 ′ key are presented in lower three
rows of Fig. 18. It is clear from the extracted logos that the key
used in the proposed algorithm is highly sensitive to any minute
alteration.
5.5. Run-time overheads of proposed encryption algorithm
One of the important parameters for analyzing efficiency of
an algorithm is the amount of time taken while encrypting and
decrypting the secret information. For an algorithm to be feasible
for high speed application, the execution time becomes even more
important and in a real-time scenario it should be as minimum
as possible. The experimental analysis in terms of execution time
of the proposed encryption algorithm has been performed on
MATLAB 2015b platform using Windows OS with processor Intel
Core i5-4600U@2.10 GHz and the resulted are shown in Table 8.
It is pertinent to mention that 64-bit key has been using while
encrypting the data.
The encryption and decryption time has been found to be less
than 0.5 s which clearly shows that in addition to high security
the proposed algorithm is computationally fast. Hence an optimum
runtime overhead is offered by proposed algorithm and as such
suits for real-time IoT operations where response time should be
fast. It is in place to mention here that [52] presents the encryption
timing analysis, for an IoT based data securing system. It has been
shown that various encryption techniques used like, AES, Curupira
and Trivium have a comparatively lesser computational overhead
compared to our scheme. The increased encryption time in our
case could be attributed to use of double layer encryption (Arnold
transform followed by proposed encryption algorithm).
668 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Table 6
Analysis against combined (dual and triple) attacks.
Attacks Watermark type Peppers Lena Aeroplane Medical
BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC
Robust 7.42 0.96 6.83 0.97 6.20 0.96 5.25 0.97
S & P Noise (0.01) + Gaussian Noise (0.001)
Fragile 49.68 0.50 49.65 0.49 48.77 0.51 48.00 0.48

Robust 2.12 0.98 2.39 0.98 3.05 0.98 2.09 0.99

S & P Noise (0.01) + MF (3 × 3)
Fragile 49.84 0.56 50.65 0.52 56.02 0.54 54.30 0.60

Robust 9.88 0.96 10.13 0.96 10.30 0.96 10.59 0.96

Rotate (10◦ ) + Crop (25%)
Fragile 55.01 0.60 60.50 0.54 58.01 0.55 60.10 0.52

Robust 11.40 0.96 11.66 0.96 11.40 0.96 11.45 0.96

Salt & Pepper + Crop (25%)
Fragile 60.40 0.57 59.62 0.55 63.79 0.53 63.04 0.54

Robust 3.12 0.99 3.61 0.98 4.02 0.98 4.27 0.98

Rotate (10◦ ) + Scaling (400%)
Fragile 61.13 0.58 61.02 0.48 57.63 0.51 57.64 0.61

Robust 6.41 0.97 5.85 0.98 5.95 0.97 6.02 0.98

Salt & Pepper + MF + Sharpening
Fragile 59.95 0.49 60.19 0.49 58.46 0.51 60.39 0.49

Robust 11.30 0.95 12.35 0.95 12.47 0.95 10.69 0.97

Sharp + Rotate (10◦ ) + Crop (25%)
Fragile 61.96 0.34 61.45 0.35 59.13 0.37 60.74 0.35

Robust 11.28 0.95 12.43 0.95 12.37 0.95 12.09 0.95

Rotate (10◦ ) + Scaling (400%) + Crop (25%)
Fragile 57.01 0.60 62.50 0.54 62.01 0.55 58.21 0.52

Fig. 13. The watermarked image and extracted watermark after rescaling and JPEG compression.

Fig. 14. Comparison of Scheme II with Abrahim [42] for JPEG compression.

5.6. Summary and discussion of different techniques used for compar-
ison
The comparison results show the superiority of the proposed
scheme against some already reported state of art schemes. The
proposed scheme has proven to be robust against all of the signal
processing attacks including unintentional and geometric attacks.
At the same time temper detection is reported on any kind of attack
on the watermarked image through fragile watermark. From the
results it is clear that the fragile watermark does not withstand
any of the signal processing attacks and hence suits perfectly for
medical and high security applications where a single bit change
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 669

Fig. 15. Comparison of Scheme II with Abrahim [42] for various attacks.

Table 7
Comparative analysis of Scheme II against different attacks.
Attack Lena Baboon Flower
[42] Proposed [42] Proposed [42] Proposed
NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER
No attack 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
Salt & Pepper .97 .0391 .96 .0556 .9680 .0449 .956 .0639 .9835 .0234 .976 .045
Poisson .9713 .1270 .996 .0028 .9137 .1201 .994 .0048 .9390 .0859 .996 .002
Speckle .91 .1211 .97 .0161 .8986 .1406 .986 .0188 .9254 .1045 .986 .019
Avg. Filtering .9451 .0771 .96 .0417 .7991 .2686 .843 .2110 .8156 .2471 .819 .0883
Gaussian LPF .9993 .0010 1 .0024 .9563 .0615 .9928 .0068 .9827 .0244 1 0
Sharpening .9455 .0781 .975 0.066 .7888 .3008 .975 .0615 .8470 .2246 .977 .0621
Cropping 25% .7500 .2500 1 .0166 .7500 .2500 1 .0366 .7500 .2500 1 .0366
Cropping 50% .5000 .5000 .998 .0753 .5000 .5000 .999 .0712 .5000 .5000 .998 .0717
Cropping 75% .2500 .7500 .989 .073 .2500 .7500 .959 .089 .2500 .7500 .988 .0898
LSB reset (1or 2) 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
LSB reset (1–3) 1 .0117 1 0 .9959 .0059 .9973 .0036 .9857 .0205 1 .0100
LSB reset (1–4) .9205 .1104 .974 .0567 .9214 .1094 .9632 .0773 .9152 .1191 .975 .0623
Resizing 50% .9633 .0518 .99 .001 .8188 .2441 0.97 .0134 .8374 .2187 .999 .0042

Table 8 as NCC greater than 0.96 has been obtained when watermarked
Timing analysis of run time overheads. image is subjected to singular attacks. The NCC is greater than
Message size (bytes) Encryption time (ms) Decryption time (ms) or equal to 0.95 for combined attacks while other schemes have
512 410 356 not tested this case scenario due to their weak robustness. For
256 277 245
JPEG compression with quality factor (QF) less than 30 the pro-
128 183 167
64 97 81 posed Scheme I offers less robustness than [43]. In addition to
32 54 48 high robustness the proposed Scheme II is able to achieve tamper
16 31 28 detection and localization without effecting the imperceptivity.
8 22 20
The proposed technique (Scheme II) can be improved in to correct
the detected tampered region, as the presented version is only able
to detect the tampered region.
can totally produce judgmental errors. Table 9 shows the summary
of different techniques used for comparison in this work. 6. Conclusion
As evident from Table 9, proposed technique offers a best com-
bination of different requirements needed by an application from In this paper two new watermarking schemes namely Scheme
a watermarking scheme. It provides adequate security, robustness, I and Scheme II have been proposed for copyright protection and
payload and imperceptivity as has been analyzed and presented in authentication of digital content exchanged through insecure net-
depth in Section 5. The imperceptivity of the proposed technique works. The schemes have been evaluated for gray-scale, color and
is more than 40 dB in all the cases which is nearly same or more medical images. Scheme I uses combined features of DWT and DCT
than rest of the schemes under comparison. The proposed scheme to embed a robust watermark in a gray-scale image. Scheme II
offers very high security and a single bit change in secret key results embeds a robust watermark and a fragile logo in the host RGB
in an extracted watermark with no meaningful information, as image. Scheme I has been developed with an aim to develop a
discussed in Section 5.4. The robustness of the scheme is very high highly robust watermarking framework for copyright protection
670 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673

Fig. 16. Extracted watermark after different attacks and BER comparison with Ghebleh [44].

Fig. 17. Temper localization results in case of different forgery attacks.

 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673 671

Fig. 18. Extracted watermarks with variation in keys, K1 and K2 .

Table 9
Comparative analysis of proposed schemes against different techniques.
Scheme Benoraira [33] Hu et al. [43] Proposed Scheme I Abrahim [42] Ghebleh [44] Proposed Scheme II
Cover image Gray Gray Gray Color Color Color
Embedding domain Transform Transform Transform Spatial Transform Spatial + Transform
Watermark embedded Robust Robust Robust Robust Robust Robust + Fragile
Watermark type Binary Binary Binary Binary Binary Binary
Watermark size 16 × 16 64 × 64 64 × 64 or 16 × 16 64 × 64 96 × 36 64 × 64 or 96 × 36
Imperceptivity (SSIM) ∼1 ∼1 ∼1 ∼1 ∼1 ∼1
Robustness Low Medium High Medium Low High
Analysis for hybrid attacks Not done Not done High Not done Not done High
Security Low Low High Low Low High
Tamper detection No No No No No Yes
Localization No No No No No Yes

applications, which takes care of singular as well as hybrid attacks.
It has been found that Scheme I shows better robustness against
various image processing attacks such as resizing, cropping, scal-
ing, filtering, random noise compared to various state-of-art tech-
niques. Further, the embedded watermark is highly secure as it is
provided with a double layer of security. As such Scheme I can find
wide range of applications in the areas of multimedia copyright
protection. In certain situations, besides copyright protection the
content authentication of multimedia objects is of greater impor-
tance. For such situation Scheme II has been developed and tested.
The results prove that the fragile watermark embedded into the
cover image shows high sensitivity for all the image processing
and geometric attacks. The fragile watermark gets destroyed even
if a minute change is made to the watermarked media. The fragile
watermark serves the purpose of initial stage authentication. If the
extracted watermark is same as embedded one, i.e. error free, it is
considered to be authentic, otherwise the decision could be used
to make a retransmission request. One of the main issues with the
proposed approach, is that we are only able to detect a tampered
region in an image. Scheme II in its present form is unable to correct
the tampered region. We intend to extend the work to facilitate
recovery of the image after tamper has been localized. Further, the
schemes will also be tested for watermarking in video files.
Acknowledgments
This publication is an outcome of the R&D work undertaken
project under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme of Ministry of Elec-
tronics & Information Technology, Government of India, being
implemented by Digital India Corporation and in part is supported
by Department of Science and Technology (DST) New Delhi, India
under DST inspire scheme.
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Nasir N. Hurrah is a doctoral student in the Depart-
ment of Electronics and IT, University of Kashmir. He is
pursuing Ph.D. under VISVESVARAYA PHD Scheme for
Electronics and I.T., sponsored by Ministry of Electronics
& Information Technology Government of India and is
currently working on the Development of Robust image
watermarking techniques for copyright protection and
authentication.
Shabir A. Parah has completed his M.Sc., M. Phil and
Ph.D. in Electronics from University of Kashmir, Srinagar
in the year 2004, 2010 and 2013 respectively in the field
of Signal processing and Data hiding. He is working as
Assistant Professor in the department of Electronics and
I.T, University of Kashmir, Srinagar. His fields of interest
are Multimedia Signal Processing, Secure Communica-
tion, Digital Watermarking and Steganography. Dr. Shabir
A. Parah has guided about twenty five PG projects. He
has published more than 100 research papers in Interna-
tional/National journals and conference proceedings.
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah, N.A. Loan et al. / Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 654–673
Nazir A. Loan is a doctoral scholar in the Department of
Electronics and IT, University of Kashmir and is currently
working on the Development of Robust watermarking
algorithms for multimedia applications. He is INSPIRE
fellow of Department of Science and Technology Govern-
ment of India.
Javaid A. Sheikh has completed his M.Sc., M. Phil and
Ph.D. in Electronics from University of Kashmir, Srina-
gar in the year 2004, 2008 and 2012 respectively in
the field of communications and Signal Processing. He
is working as Assistant Professor in the department of
Electronics and I.T University of Kashmir, Srinagar. His
fields of interest are Wireless Communications, design
and development of efficient MIMO OFDM based wireless
communication techniques, Spread Spectrum modula-
tion, Digital Signal Processing, Electromagnetics. He has
published about ninety research papers in International
and National journals and conference proceedings.
Mohamed Elhoseny received the Ph.D. degree in Com-
puter and Information from Mansoura University, Egypt
(in a scientific research channel with Department of
Computer Science and Engineering, University of North
Texas, USA). Dr. Elhoseny is currently an Assistant Pro-
fessor at the Faculty of Computers and Information, Man-
soura University. Collectively, Dr. Elhoseny authored/co-
authored over 70 International Journal articles, Con-
ference Proceedings, Book Chapters, and 3 Springer
books. Dr. Elhoseny serves as the Editor-in-Chief of
Big Data and Cloud Innovation Journal and Frontiers of
673
Supercomputing. Besides, he is an Associate Editor of several journals such as IEEE
Access, and PLOS One journal. Dr. Elhoseny guest-edited several special issues
at many journals published by IEEE, Hindawi, Springer, Inderscience, and MDPI.
Moreover, he served as the co-chair, the publication chair, the program chair, and a
track chair for several international conferences published by IEEE and Springer.
Dr. Elhoseny is a TPC Member or Reviewer in 30+ International Conferences
and Workshops. Furthermore, he has been reviewing papers for 20+ International
Journals including IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Transportation Systems, IEEE Sensors Letters, IEEE Communication Letters, Elsevier
Computer Communications, Computer Networks, Sustainable Cities and Society,
Wireless Personal Communications, and Expert Systems with Applications.
Khan Muhammad is a researcher at Intelligent Media
Laboratory (IM Lab), Sejong University, Seoul, South Ko-
rea. His research interests include medical image analysis
(brain MRI, diagnostic hysteroscopy and wireless cap-
sule endoscopy), information security (steganography,
encryption, watermarking and image hashing), video
summarization, multimedia, computer vision, fire/smoke
detection and surveillance video analysis. He has pub-
lished over 50 papers in peer-reviewed international
journals and conferences in these research areas with
target venues as IEEE TII, TIE, TSMC-Systems, IoT, Access,
TSC, Elsevier IJIM, INS, Neurocomputing, PRL, FGCS, COMCOM, COMIND, JPDC, PMC,
BSPC, CAEE, Springer MTAP, JOMS, and RTIP, etc. He is serving as a professional
reviewer for over 40 well-reputed journals and conferences including IEEE TII,
COMMAG, NETWORK, WCOM, IoT, TIP, TCSVT, TVT, Access, ACM TMCCA, Elsevier
FGCS, IJIM, INS, INFFUS, Neurocomputing, PRL, JNCA, COMCOM, SIGPROC, COMNET,
COMIND, JPDC, CAEE, Springer MTAP, MONET, JOMS, SIVP, EURASIP JIVP, T& F
Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI, SAGE IJDSN, CCCT 2015, ICNC 2017,
AINA 2017, and CMES-2018. He also acted as TPC member of AINA 2017 for the
track ‘‘Multimedia Systems and Applications’’. He is currently involved in editing of
several special issues as GE/LGE. He is a member of the IEEE.