MPhil Thesis Defence


"A Framework for the Verification of Watermarking Protocol"

By

Mr. Sze-Chit Ho


Abstract

Recent popularity of the Internet allows goods to be sold and distributed
effectively in their digital form. However, the protection of the digital
rights of these goods in a non-trusted Internet environment is a major
concern hindering most content providers to adopt this approach.
Watermarking protocols provide an opportunity for breaking such obstacles.
By employing digital watermarking technologies, watermarking protocols can
solve a number of issues concerning trust, copyright protection, privacy,
and so on. Their correctness must be rigorously verified before digital
rights violation can be legally resolved at the court. However, these
protocols are too complex to be manually analyzed.

In this thesis, we propose a logical framework to facilitate the
verification of watermarking protocols. The framework provides a formal
way of modeling watermarking protocols in terms of formulae and actions
where protocol goals can be rigorously proved and verified. Some
mechanical verification steps are also automatable. We have succeeded in
finding a fault in a published watermarking protocol proposed by Cheung et
al. with our framework. A number of implementation details that are not
clearly stated in the description of protocols are also discovered. Our
framework can serve as a tool for both protocol designers in verifying
their ideas and for developers to elaborate on the implementation details
of the protocols.


Date:				Tuesday, 17 August 2004

Time:				2:00p.m.-4:00p.m.

Venue:				Room 3301
				Lifts 17-18

Committee Members:		Prof. Shing-Chi Cheung (Supervisor)
				Prof. Nevin Zhang (Chairperson)
				Prof. H.F. Leung (CUHK)


**** ALL are Welcome ****