5973251
Secure authentication watermarking for binary images
Authentication watermarking is a hidden data inserted into an image, in order to detect any alterations. It seems to be almost impossible to design a really secure authentication watermarking without making use of the solid cryptography theory and techniques. In a cryptography-based authentication watermarking, a message authentication code (or digital signature) of the whole image is computed and the resulting code is inserted into the image itself. However, inserting the code alters the image and consequently its authentication code, invalidating the watermark. To avoid this problem, for gray-scale or color image, usually the least significant bits (LSBs) are cleared, the authentication code of the LSB-cleared image is computed and then the code is inserted into LSBs. Surely, one cannot perform the same procedure for binary images. We propose a quite simple solution for inserting a secure authentication watermarking in dispersed-dot halftone images. This technique can also be applied to any kind of binary images (including clustered-dot halftones), though the visual quality is not as good as when applied to dispersed-dot halftones. The proposed technique can be used with both secret-key or public-key ciphers.
13935279
Robust anisotropic diffusion to produce clear statistical parametric map from noisy fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uses MRI to noninvasively map areas of increased neuronal activity in human brain without the use of an exogenous contrast agent. Low signal-to-noise ratio of fMRI images makes it necessary to use sophisticated image processing techniques, such as statistical parametric map (SPM), to detect activated brain areas. This paper presents a new technique to obtain clear SPM from noisy fMRI data. It is based on the robust anisotropic diffusion. A direct application of the anisotropic diffusion to fMRI does not work, mainly due to the lack of sharp boundaries between activated and non-activated regions. To overcome this difficulty, we propose to calculate SPM from noisy fMRI, compute diffusion coefficients in the SPM space, and then perform the diffusion in fMRI images using the coefficients previously computed. These steps are iterated until the convergence. Experimental results using the new technique yielded surprisingly sharp and noiseless SPMs.
6853667
Efficient Algorithms for Pairing-Based Cryptosystems
We describe fast new algorithms to implement recent cryptosystems based on the Tate pairing. In particular, our techniques improve pairing evaluation speed by a factor of about 55 compared to previously known methods in characteristic 3, and attain performance comparable to that of RSA in larger characteristics. We also propose faster algorithms for scalar multiplication in characteristic 3 and square root extraction over Fpm, the latter technique being also useful in contexts other than that of pairing-based cryptography.
15509328
New features for affine-invariant shape classification
An object seen from different viewpoints results in differently deformed images. Affine-invariant shape classification must classify correctly the object, regardless its viewpoint. In this paper, we propose new local and global features invariant under affine transformation. These features can be used for supervised or unsupervised shape classification, and for shape-based image indexing and retrieval. One of the proposed features is related to the convex deficiency and the others are extracted from the area matrix. Area matrix was used by Shen for the similarity matching in image retrieval. However, differently from the Shen's work, we parameterize the shape contour using the affine-length parameter. This makes our features robust to affine parameterization, while Shen's work does not have this property. Experimental results indicate that our method can classify correctly even highly deformed and noisy shapes using small training sets.
4790058
A public-key authentication watermarking for binary images
Authentication watermarking is the process that inserts hidden data into an object (image) in order to detect any fraudulent alteration perpetrated by a malicious hacker. In the literature, quite a small number of secure authentication methods are available for binary images. This paper proposes a new secure authentication watermarking method for binary images. It can detect any visually significant alteration while maintaining good visual quality. As usual, the security of the algorithm lies on the secrecy of a private-key. Only its owner can insert the correct watermark while anyone may verify the authenticity through the corresponding public-key. A possible application of the proposed technique is in Internet fax transmission, i.e. for legal authentication of documents routed outside the phone network.
3147895
Pitfalls in public key watermarking
The cryptographic concept of digital signatures is well suited to image watermarking for authentication and integrity verification. However, the peculiar nature of watermarks demands special care in the application of digital signatures for this purpose. We cryptanalyze a recently proposed watermarking scheme and show how it can be strengthened to thwart our attacks, exploring the use of hashing function contexts and signature algorithms based on elliptic curve cryptography.
7309856
Wish branches: combining conditional branching and predication for adaptive predicated execution
Predicated execution has been used to reduce the number of branch mispredictions by eliminating hard-to-predict branches. However, the additional instruction overhead and additional data dependencies due to predicated execution sometimes offset the performance advantage of having fewer mispredictions. We propose a mechanism in which the compiler generates code that can be executed either as predicated code or non-predicated code (i.e., code with normal conditional branches). The hardware decides whether the predicated code or the non-predicated code is executed based on a run-time confidence estimation of the branch's prediction. The code generated by the compiler is the same as predicated code, except the predicated conditional branches are NOT removed - they are left intact in the program code. These conditional branches are called wish branches. The goal of wish branches is to use predicated execution for hard-to-predict dynamic branches and branch prediction for easy-to-predict dynamic branches, thereby obtaining the best of both worlds. We also introduce a class of wish branches, called wish loops, which utilize predication to reduce the misprediction penalty for hard-to-predict backward (loop) branches. We describe the semantics, types, and operation of wish branches along with the software and hardware support required to generate and utilize them. Our results show that wish branches decrease the average execution time of a subset of SPEC INT 2000 benchmarks by 14.2% compared to traditional conditional branches and by 13.3% compared to the best-performing predicated code binary
2255453
TCP offload through connection handoff
This paper presents a connection handoff interface between the operating system and the network interface. Using this interface, the operating system can offload a subset of TCP connections in the system to the network interface, while the remaining connections are processed on the host CPU. Offloading can reduce computation and memory bandwidth requirements for packet processing on the host CPU. However, full TCP offloading may degrade system performance because finite processing and memory resources on the network interface limit the amount of packet processing and the number of connections. Using handoff, the operating system controls the number of offloaded connections in order to fully utilize the network interface without overloading it. Handoff is transparent to the application, and the operating system may choose to offload connections to the network interface or reclaim them from the interface at any time. A prototype system based on the modified FreeBSD operating system shows that handoff reduces the number of instructions and cache misses on the host CPU. As a result, the number of CPU cycles spent processing each packet decreases by 16--84%. Simulation results show handoff can improve web server throughput (SEPCweb99) by 15%, despite short-lived connections.
5469426
Unraveling condition specific gene transcriptional regulatory networks in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
BackgroundGene expression and transcription factor (TF) binding data have been used to reveal gene transcriptional regulatory networks. Existing knowledge of gene regulation can be presented using gene connectivity networks. However, these composite connectivity networks do not specify the range of biological conditions of the activity of each link in the network.ResultsWe present a novel method that utilizes the expression and binding patterns of the neighboring nodes of each link in existing experimentally-based, literature-derived gene transcriptional regulatory networks and extend them in silico using TF-gene binding motifs and a compendium of large expression data from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Using this method, we predict several hundreds of new transcriptional regulatory TF-gene links, along with experimental conditions in which known and predicted links become active. This approach unravels new links in the yeast gene transcriptional regulatory network by utilizing the known transcriptional regulatory interactions, and is particularly useful for breaking down the composite transcriptional regulatory network to condition specific networks.ConclusionOur methods can facilitate future binding experiments, as they can considerably help focus on the TFs that must be surveyed to understand gene regulation.(Supplemental material and the latest version of the MATLAB implementation of the United Signature Algorithm is available online at [1] or [see Additional files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10])
15684093
Efficient Authentication and Authorization of Mobile Users Based on Peer-to-Peer Network Mechanisms
This paper presents a peer-to-peer based authentication and authorization infrastructure to minimize authentication delays when mobile users roam across different wireless networks. The basic idea is to avoid exchanging security information between networks visited by a roaming user and the user's home authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server that is typically located in the home network possibly far away from the visited network. Instead, authentication and authorization of a roaming user shall be supported by an AAA server in the visited network. We propose that the AAA server that is responsible for authentication and authorization in a newly visited network locates the AAA server in the previously visited network and retrieves the required security information from that AAA server. The AAA servers can be organized in a peer-to-peer manner and peer-to-peer mechanisms can be applied for searching and transferring security information between them. We propose several mechanisms for quickly locating the previously responsible AAA server in order to decrease authentication delays. The performance of these mechanisms is evaluated by simulations. Real performance measurements show the rather low performance overhead of application level forwarding used in peer-to-peer networks.
6362737
Further progress in watermark evaluation testbed (WET)
While Digital Watermarking has received much attention in recent years, it is still a relatively young technology. There are few accepted tools/metrics that can be used to evaluate the suitability of a watermarking technique for a specific application. This lack of a universally adopted set of metrics/methods has motivated us to develop a web-based digital watermark evaluation system called the Watermark Evaluation Testbed or WET. There have been more improvements over the first version of WET. We implemented batch mode with a queue that allows for user submitted jobs. In addition to StirMark 3.1 as an attack module, we added attack modules based on StirMark 4.0. For a new image fidelity measure, we evaluate conditional entropy as an image fidelity measure for different watermarking algorithms and different attacks. Also, we show the results of curve fitting the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis data using the Parzen window density estimation. The curve fits the data closely while having only two parameters to estimate.