Since the mid 1990s, data hiding has been proposed as an enabling technology for securing multimedia communication, and is now used in various applications including broadcast monitoring, movie fingerprinting, steganography, video indexing and retrieval, and image authentication. Data hiding and cryptographic techniques are often combined to complement each other, thus triggering the development of a new research field of multimedia security. Besides, two related disciplines, steganalysis and data forensics, are increasingly attracting researchers and becoming another new research field of multimedia security. This journal, LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security, aims to be a forum for all researchers in these emerging fields, publishing both original and archival research results. This fourth issue contains five contributions in the area of digital watermarking. The first three papers deal with robust watermarking. The fourth paper introduces a new least distortion linear gain model for halftone image watermarking and the fifth contribution presents an optimal histogram pair based image reversible data hiding scheme.

This inaugural issue of the LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security contains five papers dealing with a wide range of topics related to multimedia security, from a survey of problems related to watermark security to an introduction to the concept of Personal Entertainment Domains (PED) in Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes.

Since the mid 1990s, data hiding has been proposed as an enabling technology for securing multimedia communication, and is now used in various applications including broadcast monitoring, movie fingerprinting, steganography, video indexing and retrieval, and image authentication. Data hiding and cryptographic techniques are often combined to complement each other, thus triggering the development of a new research field of multimedia security. Besides, two related disciplines, steganalysis and data forensics, are increasingly attracting researchers and becoming another new research field of multimedia security. This journal, LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security, aims to be a forum for all researchers in these emerging fields, publishing both original and archival research results. This issue consists mainly of a special section on content protection and forensics including four papers. The additional paper deals with histogram-based image hashing for searching content-preserving copies.

Since the mid 1990s, data hiding has been proposed as an enabling technology for securing multimedia communication, and is now used in various applications including broadcast monitoring, movie fingerprinting, steganography, video indexing and retrieval, and image authentication. Data hiding and cryptographic techniques are often combined to complement each other, thus triggering the development of a new research field of multimedia security. Besides, two related disciplines, steganalysis and data forensics, are increasingly attracting researchers and becoming another new research field of multimedia security. This journal, LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security, aims to be a forum for all researchers in these emerging fields, publishing both original and archival research results. This third issue contains five contributions in the areas of steganography and digital watermarking. The first two papers deal with the security of steganographic systems; the third paper presents a novel image steganographic scheme. Finally, this volume includes two papers that focus on digital watermarking and data hiding. The fourth paper introduces and analyzes a new covert channel and the fifth contribution analyzes the performance of additive attacks against quantization-based data hiding methods.

This second issue in the LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security contains five papers dealing with a wide range of topics related to multimedia security. Coverage includes an introduction to Fingercasting, which allows joint fingerprinting and decryption of broadcast messages; a presentation on estimation attack on content-based video fingerprinting; and a survey on various blind and robust watermarking schemes for 3D shapes.

The aims of these proceedings are to provide a complete coverage of the areas outlined, and to bring together researchers from academic and industry to share ideas, challenges, and solutions relating to the multifaceted aspects of this field. New multimedia standards (for example, MPEG-21) facilitate the seamless integration of multiple modalities into interoperable multimedia frameworks, transforming the way people work and interact with multimedia data. These key technologies and multimedia solutions interact and collaborate with each other in increasingly effective ways, contributing to the multimedia revolution and having a significant impact across a wide spectrum of consumer, business, healthcare, education, and governmental domains.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Hiding, IH 2010, held in Calgary, AB, Canada, in June 2010. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions.

th It is our great pleasure to present this volume of the proceedings of the 10 edition of Information Hiding (IH 2008). The conference was held in Santa Barbara - the Ame- can Riviera, California, USA, during May 19–21, 2008. It was organized by three Santa Barbarans on fire, from both industry (Mayachitra) and academia (UCSB). Over the years, Information Hiding (IH) has established itself as a premier forum for presenting research covering various aspects of information hiding. Continuing the tradition, this year, we provide a balanced program including topics such as anonymity and privacy, forensics, steganography, watermarking, fingerprinting, other hiding domains, and novel applications. We received a total of 64 papers from all over the globe, and would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who submitted their paper to IH 2008 and thus contributed to the consolidation of the reputation of the conference. The papers were refereed by at least three revi- ers who provided detailed comments, which was followed by discussion amongst the Program Committee members. Only 25 papers were selected for presentation. This rigorous review process will certainly strengthen Information Hiding’s po- tion as the top forum of our community.

Today, more than 80% of the data transmitted over networks and archived on our computers, tablets, cell phones or clouds is multimedia data - images, videos, audio, 3D data. The applications of this data range from video games to healthcare, and include computer-aided design, video surveillance and biometrics. It is becoming increasingly urgent to secure this data, not only during transmission and archiving, but also during its retrieval and use. Indeed, in today’s "all-digital" world, it is becoming ever-easier to copy data, view it unrightfully, steal it or falsify it. Multimedia Security 1 analyzes the issues of the authentication of multimedia data, code and the embedding of hidden data, both from the point of view of defense and attack. Regarding the embedding of hidden data, it also covers invisibility, color, tracing and 3D data, as well as the detection of hidden messages in an image by steganalysis.

This book examines the context, motivation and current status of biometric systems based on the palmprint, with a specific focus on touchless and less-constrained systems. It covers new technologies in this rapidly evolving field and is one of the first comprehensive books on palmprint recognition systems. It discusses the research literature and the most relevant industrial applications of palmprint biometrics, including the low-cost solutions based on webcams. The steps of biometric recognition are described in detail, including acquisition setups, algorithms, and evaluation procedures. Constraints and limitations of current palmprint recognition systems are analyzed and discussed. The authors also introduce innovative methods for touchless and less-constrained palmprint recognition, with the aim to make palmprint biometrics easier to use in practical, daily-life applications, and overcome the typical constraints and limitations described. Touchless Palmprint Recognition Systems targets professionals and researchers working in biometrics, image processing and three-dimensional reconstruction. Advanced-level students studying biometrics and computer science will also find this material valuable as a secondary text book or reference.