Proposed Watermarking System Using Genetic Algorithm and Security Measures

Abstract

This paper produces a proposed watermarking system to be used for protecting images from tampering by attackers and other third parties. This proposed system consists of three stages: pattern generation, watermark embedding and watermarking extracting. In the first stage, two patterns (primary and secondary) are generated from some features of the image that used as a watermark, then applying a genetic algorithm to get random, unique and robust primary pattern, This unique pattern that is generated from image used as a watermark and embeds this pattern in the original cover image instead of embedding the whole watermarking image inside the cover image. The primary pattern will be embedded in different three locations mainly diagonal, vertical and horizontal lines in the middle of the cover image. The receiver can retrieve this pattern to ensure that it is the same pattern that is generated from the watermark image. In addition to generate and embed secondary pattern that used to confirm between the sender and the recipient, if the secondary pattern doesn’t match, the recipient tells the sender to resend the image again. Different experiments are applied to test the system and the results show the watermark is random, imperceptible, and robust enough against image cropping attacks, fully secure, and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) value of the watermarked image is better than the watermarked image of many previous watermarking system when compared with them.