News Forensic Watermarking Tool Embeds Trackable Info in Every Frame

[Admin]

A new forensic watermarking tool promises to be able to recover actionable information for piracy and copyright-infringement pursuits over a single frame.

Forensic Watermarking Tool Embeds Trackable Info in Every Frame : Read more

 

[edzieba]

[could this technology be applied to internal game builds

No. A game is not an encoded video stream.

This steganographic technique, like all other video steno tools, relies on you performing the watermarking on a controlled system prior to distribution: compromise of that system, or an unwatermarked file ever leaving control, means complete compromise of the entire architecture. Since games are rendered locally, this prerequisite is impossible to achieve.

 

[Brian28]

There are ways to add steganographic marks to video game output, and some games do, but as you said it's not foolproof and could be removed as long as it's being rendered on the user's machine. But it can still prevent trivial sharing of such content. (Not everyone has the skill to alter a game's render pipeline.) I know of games where this is used for alpha versions which are supposed to be under NDA. (Not this specific tool, but steganographic marks in general.)

 

[Giroro]

I wonder if this technology will be made freely available so all content creators from all backgrounds and castes of society can protect their life's work.

Or, if it will be just another obscenely expensive weapon that the established mega-billionaire media oligarchy will abuse use as designed to steal ideas fully comply with minimum local legal requirements, victim blame consumers tricked into buying their products provide strong community outreach, imprison people who want convenient and long-lasting access to media dirty freeloading pirates, and blast independent reviewers into oblivion provide an open-door policy to listen to feedback from all people of differing opinions and world views.

Just kidding, there's no need to wonder exactly who this is for and who it's designed to target.

 

[umeng2002_2]

Blur > sharpen > render

 

[bit_user]

No. A game is not an encoded video stream.

You're lacking imagination. Given a library of GPU-optimized code for inserting these watermarks, a game absolutely could watermark the final rendered images before they're sent to the display. They wouldn't even need much information - just your license key - and it wouldn't need to be entirely recoverable from just a single frame.

The main tradeoff game makers would face is that this, like their other DRM, could be removed by skillful crackers who knew to look for it. However, if the game makers are sufficiently motivated, perhaps they could embed the information in more subtle places, like various game textures during loading time. This would also make it less impactful on framerates.

 

[edzieba]

You're lacking imagination. Given a library of GPU-optimized code for inserting these watermarks, a game absolutely could watermark the final rendered images before they're sent to the display. They wouldn't even need much information - just your license key - and it wouldn't need to be entirely recoverable from just a single frame.

The main tradeoff game makers would face is that this, like their other DRM, could be removed by skillful crackers who knew to look for it. However, if the game makers are sufficiently motivated, perhaps they could embed the information in more subtle places, like various game textures during loading time. This would also make it less impactful on framerates.

Stenographic on-line watermarking suffers from the same issues that existing non-stenographic watermarking has (i.e. printing username or some other UID onto the rendered image): once a user knows that it exists then as an active influence on rendering it can be tracked down and removed. The render pipeline is local, and even attempts at 'secure enclaves' like for HDMI have not help up against local access. Offline tricks like watermarking textures - as well as being vulnerable to disruption from the render pipeline - are also the more trivial to defeat via asset replacement.