Zero watermarking does not alter the original information contained in vector map data and provides perfect imperceptibility. The use of zero watermarking for data copyright protection has become a significant trend in digital watermarking research. However, zero watermarking encounters tremendous obstacles to its development and application because of its requirement to store copyright information with a third party and its difficulty in confirming copyright ownership. Aiming at the shortcomings of the existing zero watermarking technology, this paper proposes a new zero watermarking construction method based on the angular features of vector data that store the zero watermarking and copyright information on the blockchain after an XOR operation. When the watermark is being extracted, the copyright information can be extracted with the XOR operation to obtain the information stored on the blockchain. Experimental results show that the combination of zero watermarking and blockchain proposed in this paper gives full play to the advantages of the two technologies and protects the copyright of data in a lossless fashion. Compared with the traditional zero watermarking algorithms, the proposed zero watermarking algorithm exhibits stronger robustness. Moreover, the proposed data copyright protection framework with a combination of zero watermarking and blockchain can also be applied to other data types, such as images, audio, video, and remote sensing images.

The screen-cam process, which is taking pictures of the content displayed on a screen with mobile phones or cameras, is one of the main ways that image information is leaked. However, traditional image watermarking methods are not resilient to screen-cam processes with severe distortion. In this paper, a screen-cam robust watermarking scheme with a feature-based synchronization method is proposed. First, the distortions caused by the screen-cam process are investigated. These distortions can be summarized into the five categories of linear distortion, gamma tweaking, geometric distortion, noise attack, and low-pass filtering attack. Then, a local square feature region (LSFR) construction method based on a Gaussian function, modified Harris–Laplace detector, and speeded-up robust feature (SURF) orientation descriptor is developed for watermark synchronization. Next, the message is repeatedly embedded in each selected LSFR by an improved embedding algorithm, which employs a non-rotating embedding method and a preprocessing method, to modulate the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) coefficients. In the process of watermark detection, we fully utilize the captured information and extract the message based on a local statistical feature. Finally, the experimental results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the method against common attacks and screen-cam attacks. Compared to the previous schemes, our scheme has not only good robustness against screen-cam attack, but is also effective against screen-cam with additional common desynchronization attacks.

Zero watermarking is an important part of copyright protection of vector geographic data. However, how to improve the robustness of zero watermarking is still a critical challenge, especially in resisting attacks with significant distortion. We proposed a zero watermarking method for vector geographic data based on the number of neighboring features. The method makes full use of spatial characteristics of vector geographic data, including topological characteristics and statistical characteristics. First, the number of first-order neighboring features (NFNF) and the number of second-order neighboring features (NSNF) of every feature in vector geographic data are counted. Then, the watermark bit is determined by the NFNF value, and the watermark index is determined by the NSNF value. Finally, combine the watermark bits and the watermark indices to construct a watermark. Experiments verify the theoretical achievements and good robustness of this method. Simulation results also demonstrate that the normalized coefficient of the method is always kept at 1.00 under the attacks that distort data significantly, which has the superior performance in comparison to other methods.

Projection transformation is an important part of geographic analysis in geographic information systems, which are particularly common for vector geographic data. However, achieving resistance to projection transformation attacks on watermarking for vector geographic data is still a challenging task. We proposed a digital watermarking against projection transformation based on feature invariants for vector geographic data in this paper. Firstly, the features of projection transformation are analyzed, and the number of vertices, the storage order, and the storage direction of two adjacent objects are designed and used as the feature invariant to projection transformation. Then, the watermark index is calculated by the number of vertices of two adjacent objects, and the embedding rule is determined by the storage direction of two adjacent objects. Finally, the proposed scheme performs blind detection through the storage direction of adjacent features. Experimental results demonstrate that the method can effectively resist arbitrary projection transformation, which indicates the superior performance of the proposed method in comparison to the previous methods.

This paper proposes a joint encryption and screen-cam robust watermarking scheme. This method combines the advantages of smartphone, encryption and watermarking technologies, thereby achieving watermark extraction with a smartphone, partial decryption and tracking leakage from sneak shots. We design a dual watermarking algorithm to achieve watermark detection from both encrypted and decrypted images. First, a watermark is embedded in the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) domain to enable leakage tracking. Then, a second watermark is generated based on QR (Quick response) code encoding and inverse DFT to achieve high watermark capacity and error correction ability, where the secret key for decryption is included in the watermark message. By hiding this message carrying the watermark for the encrypted image in the changes caused by embedding the first watermark, we can improve imperceptibility and will not affect the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Finally, to enhance the robustness of watermark after encryption, a chaotic mapping-based segment encryption algorithm is proposed. In the process of watermark detection, to cope with perspective correction, a frame locating based algorithm is employed to achieve watermark synchronization from a recaptured picture of the encrypted image. Considering the severe quality degradation, we use a noise component and local statistic feature-based method to extract the message bits. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is secure, and highly robust, to screen-cam the process for both before and after decryption. Additionally, after decryption, the proposed scheme also has high robustness against common image processing attacks.