Wu and Liu are PIs for AFRL anti-collusion fingerprinting

ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS) and Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) are the principal investigators for a new Air Force Research Laboratory Digital Data Embedding Technologies (DDET) award.

Their research, "A Collusion-Resistant Multimedia Fingerprinting Framework for Information Forensics," is focused on designing efficient and effective digital fingerprints for plain text and multimedia content that can withstand collusion attacks, allow for gathering forensic evidence of guilt and identify colluders.

The problem being addressed. Digital fingerprinting is an emerging technology for identifying users who have legitimate access to plaintext content but may use the content for unintended purposes, such as duplication and redistribution. For multimedia content, fingerprints are often embedded using conventional watermarking techniques that are typically concerned with robustness against a variety of attacks mounted by an individual. Ensuring the appropriate use of multimedia content, however, is no longer a traditional security issue with a single adversary. The global nature of the Internet has brought media closer to both authorized users and adversaries. It is now easy for a group of users with differently marked versions of the same content to work together and collectively mount attacks against the fingerprints. These attacks, known as collusion attacks, provide a cost-effective method for removing an identifying fingerprint.

The AFRL DDET program is developing, employing and exploiting digital data embedding technologies to provide early demonstrations for potential applications to operational DoD systems. It also is enhancing existing and maturing technologies and provides a vehicle for continued development.

Co-PIs for the project are ISR Research Associate Z. Jane Wang and ISR alumnus Wade Trappe, a former student of Dr. Liu, who is now an assistant professor in Rutgers University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and WINLAB.

Published July 2, 2003