3D Object Watermarking from Data Hiding in the Homomorphic Encrypted Domain

Abstract

For over a decade, 3D objects are an increasingly popular form of media. It has become necessary and urgent to secure them during their transmission or archiving. In this article, we propose a new method to obtain a watermarked 3D object from high-capacity data hiding in the encrypted domain. Based on the homomorphic properties of the Paillier cryptosystem, our proposed method allows us to embed several secret messages in the encrypted domain with a high-capacity. These messages can be extracted in the plain-text domain after the 3D object decryption. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose a data hiding method in the encrypted domain where the high-capacity watermark is conserved in the plain-text domain after the 3D object is decrypted. The encryption and the data hiding in the encrypted domain are format compliant and without size expansion, despite the use of the Paillier cryptosystem. Each time a new message is embedded in the encrypted domain, flags are added in order to indicate which blocks are still available for the embedding of additional messages. After the decryption of a watermarked encrypted 3D object, our method produces a watermarked 3D object which is visually very similar to the original 3D object. From the decrypted watermarked 3D object, we can then extract all the embedded messages directly in the plain-text domain, without the need for an auxiliary file. Moreover, large keys are used, rending our method secure for real-life applications.