Digital Fingerprinting Based on Quaternion Encryption Scheme for Gray-Tone Images

摘要

In this paper a new idea of digital images fingerprinting is proposed. The method is based on quaternion encryption in the Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode. Quaternions are hyper-complex numbers of rank 4 and thus often applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. The encryption algorithm described in the paper is designed for gray-tone images but can easily be adopted for color ones. For the encryption purpose, the algorithm uses the rotation of data vectors presented as quaternions in a three-dimensional space around another quaternion (key). On the receiver's side, a small amount of unnoticeable by human eye errors occurs in the decrypted images. These errors are used as a user's digital fingerprint for the purpose of traitor tracing in case of copyright violation. A computer-based simulation was performed to scrutinize the potential presented quaternion encryption scheme for the implementation of digital fingerprinting. The obtained results are shown at the end of this paper.