Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Program Targets Image Doctoring (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: It isn't hard for just about anyone to change or alter an image these days — and that can be a problem. It's an issue researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency want to put to rest with a new program called Media Forensics, or MediFor, which looks to build an algorithmic-based platform that can detect image manipulation. "The forensic tools used today lack robustness and scalability and address only some aspects of media authentication; an end-to-end platform to perform a complete and automated forensic analysis does not exist. Although there are a few applications for image manipulation detection in the commercial sector, they are typically limited to a yes/no decision about the source being an "original" asset, obtained directly from an imaging device. As a result, media authentication is typically performed manually using a variety of ad hoc methods that are often more art than science, and forensics analysts rely heavily on their own background and experience," DARPA states.
Just check if some of the pixels are wrong. It helps if you've seen a few shops.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't know about identifying things after the fact, but an idea I've tossed around for a few years now is a forensic digital camera. Basically, the hardware will sign/watermark all the photos it takes with some sort of digital signature unique to the camera. The private key would be buried in silicon in such a way as to destroy it if attempts are made to discover it. I'm not a security/encryption expert by any means, so I don't know how feasible this is (or does it already exist?) but sounds plausible to me.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
if ( CanTell(somePixels) && EnoughShopsSeen( time )) {
printf("THIS LOOKS SHOPPED");
}
The one where "endtoend" appears as one word, but "ad hoc" appears as two - in the same quote.
nt.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm still waiting for the "Enhance Button".
Everyone with two brain cells is already rooting for Trump.
Fortunately, I have a lot more than two brain cells, so I can see how Trump will repeat history in a bad way.
Or has the OP been contacted by counsel for Adobe Systems?
The last time this was trotted out, it was something you can't see: steganography.
I have noticed that if you use Photoshop to do enhancement of contrast/brightness etc the color histogram will have lots of blanks and will look like the skyline of Manhattan not the ridge line of Rocky mountains. Especially if I use something called "gamma correction" (hope I remembered this term right). Is that a characteristic of all image processing? or just the implementation "feature" of Photoshop.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Warning: Shameless Self-Promotion
I've written a science fiction novel, The NPC that deals with the ramifications of this sort of thing. The solution in the novel is extreme: all recording devices are required to stream their data to a trusted 3rd party (in this case, a corporation called VuDyne) in real time with an encrypted certificate. Otherwise the digital data is not trusted to represent reality. As you can imagine, this gives VuDyne a great deal of power.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If you can use an algorithm to detect tampering, you can use that same algorithm to alter your image so the algorithm no longer detects the manipulation.
...the doubts on the reality of any kind of imagery cannot be overcome and we need to abandon the idea that images (moving or not) can be trusted as evidence ? Would the world stop spinning ? I highly doubt this.
Perhaps there can be an exception in cases where the entire chain of taking and handling an image can be verified in one way or another ?
Unalterable checksum produced by the camera perhaps ? I know that we can already do this with GPS flight logs (track/altitude) coming from certified flight recorders. (See http://www.fai.org/gnss-record... ) It would certainly require certification of the camera used for taking such an image.
Hey, I didn't spend four years in image doctoring school to be called a shopper!