The ease of capturing, manipulating, distributing, and consuming digital media (e.g., images, audio, video, graphics, and text) has enabled new applications and brought a number of important security challenges to the forefront. These challenges have prompted significant research and development in the areas of digital watermarking, steganography, data hiding, forensics, deepfakes, media identification, biometrics, and encryption to protect owners’ rights, establish provenance and veracity of content, and to preserve privacy. Research results in these areas has been translated into new paradigms and applications for monetizing media while maintaining ownership rights, and new biometric and forensic identification techniques for novel methods for ensuring privacy. The Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics Conference is a premier destination for disseminating high-quality, cutting-edge research in these areas. The conference provides an excellent venue for researchers and practitioners to present their innovative work as well as to keep abreast of the latest developments in watermarking, security, and forensics. Early results and fresh ideas are particularly encouraged and supported by the conference review format: only a structured abstract describing the work in progress and preliminary results is initially required and the full paper is requested just before the conference. A strong focus on how research results are applied by industry, in practice, also gives the conference its unique flavor.
The ease of capturing, manipulating, distributing, and consuming digital media (e.g. images, audio, video, graphics, and text) has motivated new applications and raised a number of important security challenges to the forefront. These applications and challenges have prompted significant research and development activities in the areas of digital watermarking, steganography, data hiding, forensics, media identification, and encryption to protect the authenticity, security, and ownership of media objects. Research results in these areas have translated into new paradigms and applications to monetize media objects without violating their ownership rights. The Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics conference is a premier destination for disseminating high-quality, cutting-edge research in these areas. The conference provides an excellent venue for researchers and practitioners to present their innovative work as well as to keep abreast with the latest developments in watermarking, security, and forensics. The technical program will also be complemented by keynote talks, panel sessions, and short demos involving both academic and industrial researchers/ practitioners. This strong focus on how research results are applied in practice by the industry gives the conference its unique flavor.
In recent years, ID controllers have observed an increase in the use of fraudulently obtained ID documents [1]. This often involves deception during the application process to get a genuine document with a manipulated passport photo. One of the methods used by fraudsters is the presentation of a morphed facial image. Face morphing is used to assign multiple identities to a biometric passport photo. It is possible to modify the photo so that two or more persons, usually the known applicant and one or more unknown companions, can use the passport to pass through a border control [2]. In this way, persons prohibited from crossing a border can cross it unnoticed using a face morphing attack and thus acquire a different identity. The face morphing attack aims to weaken the application for an identity card and issue a genuine identity document with a morphed facial image. A survey among experts at the Security Printers Conference revealed that a relevant number of at least 1,000 passports with morphed facial images had been detected in the last five years in Germany alone [1]. Furthermore, there are indications of a high number of unreported cases. This high presumed number of unreported cases can also be explained by the lack of morphed photographs’ detection capabilities. Such identity cards would be recognized if the controllers could recognize the morphed facial images. Various studies have shown that the human eye has a minimal ability to recognize morphed faces as such [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. This work consists of two parts. Both parts are based on the complete development of a training course for passport control officers to detect morphed facial images. Part one contains the conception and the first test trials of how the training course has to be structured to achieve the desired goals and thus improve the detection of morphed facial images for passport inspectors. The second part of this thesis will include the complete training course and the evaluation of its effectiveness.
Like many other industries, small and medium IT enterprises (IT SMEs) find themselves challenged by globalization and digital transformation. This paper highlights the implications and challenges for IT SMEs in the area of IT security, compliance, and data governance. It describes the secure and compliant integration of IT products and services of IT SMEs in order to enhance their relative competitive position against global players of the IT industry. The paper presents an approach that entails competence areas for IT security, compliance, and data governance and shows a web-based tool for surveying and measuring areas in order to derive actual readiness of IT SMEs in these areas. The paper concludes with an outlook on the expected findings and planned further developments of the approach and tool.
The Internet of Things and the Smart Home have become an increasingly important topic in recent years. The growing popularity of Smart Home Devices such as Smart TVs, Smart Door Locks, Smart Light Bulbs, and other devices is causing a rapid increase of vulnerabilities. Also, there are several vulnerabilities in software and hardware that make the security situation more complex and troublesome. Many of these systems and devices also process personal or secret data and control critical industrial processes. The need for security is extremely high. Owners and administrators of modern IoT devices are often overwhelmed with the task of securing their systems. Today, the spectrum of Smart Home technologies is growing faster than security can be guaranteed. Unsecured vulnerabilities endanger the security and privacy of consumers. This paper aims to examine the security and privacy aspects of Wi-Fi Connected and App-Controlled IoT-Based Smart Home Devices. For this purpose, the communication between the device, app, and the manufacturer's servers, as well as the firmware of the individual devices, will be examined. In particular, this paper highlights why it is important to make consumers aware of the security and privacy aspects of Smart Home devices. Finally, it will be shown which dangers exist when using these devices, how the use of these devices affects the privacy and security of the device and its users, and whether the devices comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation.
Since its invention, the Internet has changed the world, but above all, it has connected people. With the advent of the Internet of Things, the Internet connects things today much more than people do. A large part of the Internet of Things consists of IoT controlled Smart Home devices. The Internet of Things and the Smart Home have become an increasingly important topic in recent years. The growing popularity of Smart Home devices such as Smart TVs, Smart Door Locks, Smart Light Bulbs, and others is causing a rapid increase in vulnerable areas. In the future, many IoT devices could be just as many targets. The many new and inexperienced manufacturers and the absence of established uniform standards also contribute to the precarious situation. Therefore, new methods are needed to sensitize and detect these threats. In this paper, different existing approaches like those of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) are combined with concepts of this work like the Smart Home Device Life Cycle. In the context of this paper, a universal 31-page question-based test procedure is developed that can be applied to any Smart Home device. Based on this new, innovative security checklist, the communication between device, app, and the manufacturer's servers, as well as the firmware of IoT devices, can be analyzed and documented in detail. In the course of this paper, also a handout in the abbreviated form will be created, which serves the same purpose.
Remote control and remote servicing are often very problematic due to restrictive policies in health care and other critical environments. This paper describes our new design of a Secure Remote Service Box, which is a tiny box that offers restricted access and robust security policies for critical environments and institutions. It allows secure remote access (for example, Team Viewer, ...) for remote control and remote servicing and blocks all other Internet traffic and connections. All devices connected to the LAN port are secured by NAT and complex filters that are natively detected and imported by Windows Network Management. The Secure Remote Service Box fulfills Cybersecurity policies for critical environments and institutions and is, of course very reliable and secure by design.