Distortion compensated lookup-table embedding: Joint security and robustness enhancement for quantization based data hiding

Data embedding mechanism used for authentication applications should be secure in order to prevent an adversaryfrom forging the embedded data at his/her will. Meanwhile, semi-fragileness is often preferred to allow for
distinguishing content changes versus non-content changes. In this paper, we focus on jointly enhancing the
robustness and security of the embedding mechanism, which can be used as a building block for authentication.
The paper presents analysis showing that embedding through a look-up table (LUT) of non-trivial run that maps
quantized multimedia features randomly to binary data offers a probability of detection error considerably smaller
than that of the traditional quantization embedding. We quantify the security strength of LUT embedding and
enhance its robustness through distortion compensation. We introduce a combined security and capacity measure
and show that the proposed distortion compensated LUT embedding provides joint enhancement of security and
robustness over the traditional quantization embedding.