Watermarking System for Digital Leak Source Identification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Organizations face challenges in tracing the source of digital information leaks, such as screen shots of proprietary material, which can be inadvertently or maliciously shared by employees, as existing methods lack effective tracking mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a watermarking system that assigns a unique experience identifier to each browser session, logging user activities, and embedding this identifier in the displayed content, making it difficult to detect visually but recoverable, allowing for identification of the user responsible for the leak upon analysis of a screen shot.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If a watermark is made visually difficult to detect, then the privacy and aesthetics of the display are improved, but the ability to recover the watermark for leak investigation is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies color changes by using watermarks with subtle color differences from the background. The watermark is designed to be visually difficult to detect through normal viewing but can be recovered through color analysis and image processing techniques that enhance and isolate the watermark signal from the background.
2Reliability
If user activities are logged and tracked to identify leak sources, then the ability to trace leaks is improved, but user privacy expectations are worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses an intermediary approach by introducing experience identifiers as a mediator between the user and the tracking system. These identifiers are embedded in the watermarks and logged to trace leaks, while the system maintains privacy policies and user agreements to manage the balance between leak detection and user privacy expectations.
3Adaptability or versatility
If experience identifiers are embedded in all displayed content, then the coverage of leak detection is improved, but the complexity of the software system is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies universality by making the experience identifier embedding a multi-functional component that serves both leak detection and user identification purposes. The same watermarking mechanism used for leak tracing also provides a means to identify users and track their activities, consolidating multiple functions into a single system rather than requiring separate mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
Watermarks may be used to deter certain types of information leaks. In one example, leaks occur in the form of posting, in public forums, screen shots of private pages. To deter this example kind of leak, private web pages within an organization may be watermarked with an experience identifier that identifies the session in which the screen shot is captured. Other information may also be included in the watermark. The watermark may be designed to survive image compression, so that it can be recovered from either a compressed or uncompressed image of the web page. By using an experience identifier recovered from the watermark, and logs that describe activity associated with that experience identifier, it may be possible to identify the source of the information leak.