On the security of the visual hash function

Regunathan Radhakrishnan; Ziyou Xiong; Nasir D. Memon

doi:10.1117/1.1867475

1 January 2005 On the security of the visual hash function

Regunathan Radhakrishnan, Ziyou Xiong, Nasir D. Memon

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Electronic Imaging, Vol. 14, Issue 1, 013011 (January 2005). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.1867475

Abstract

Robust hash functions are central to the security of multimedia content authentication systems. Such functions are sensitive to a key but are robust to many allowed signal processing operations on the underlying content. The robustness of the hash function to changes in the original content implies the existence of a cluster in the feature space around the original contents feature vector, any point within which getting hashed to the same output. The shape and size of the cluster determines the trade-off between the robustness offered and the security of the authentication system based on the robust hash function. The clustering itself is based on a secret key and hence unknown to the attacker. However, we show that the specific clustering arrived at by the robust visual hash function (VHF) may be possible to learn. Given just an input and its hash bits, we show how to construct a statistical model of the hash function, without any knowledge of the secret key used to compute the hash. We also show how to use this model to engineer arbitrary and malicious collisions. Finally, we propose one possible modification to VHF so that constructing a model that mimics its behavior becomes difficult.

©(2005) Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Citation Download Citation

Regunathan Radhakrishnan, Ziyou Xiong, and Nasir D. Memon "On the security of the visual hash function," Journal of Electronic Imaging 14(1), 013011 (1 January 2005). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.1867475

Published: 1 January 2005

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available