Database Authentication by Distortion-Free Watermarking

In this paper we introduce a distortion free watermarking technique that strengthen the verification of integrity of the relational databases by using a public zero distortion authentication mechanism based on the Abstract Interpretation framework. The watermarking technique is partition based. The partitioning can be seen as a virtual grouping, which does not change neither the value of the table’s elements nor their physical positions. Instead of inserting the watermark directly to the database partition, we treat it as an abstract representation of that concrete partition, such that any change in the concrete domain reflects in its abstract counterpart. The main idea is to generate a gray scale image of the partition as a watermark of that partition, that serves as tamper detection procedure, followed by employing a public zero distortion authentication mechanism to verify the ownership.