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. 2015 Feb 17;10(2):e0117717.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117717. eCollection 2015.

GenInfoGuard--a robust and distortion-free watermarking technique for genetic data

Saman Iftikhar  1 , Sharifullah Khan  1 , Zahid Anwar  1 , Muhammad Kamran  2
Affiliations

GenInfoGuard--a robust and distortion-free watermarking technique for genetic data

Saman Iftikhar et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Genetic data, in digital format, is used in different biological phenomena such as DNA translation, mRNA transcription and protein synthesis. The accuracy of these biological phenomena depend on genetic codes and all subsequent processes. To computerize the biological procedures, different domain experts are provided with the authorized access of the genetic codes; as a consequence, the ownership protection of such data is inevitable. For this purpose, watermarks serve as the proof of ownership of data. While protecting data, embedded hidden messages (watermarks) influence the genetic data; therefore, the accurate execution of the relevant processes and the overall result becomes questionable. Most of the DNA based watermarking techniques modify the genetic data and are therefore vulnerable to information loss. Distortion-free techniques make sure that no modifications occur during watermarking; however, they are fragile to malicious attacks and therefore cannot be used for ownership protection (particularly, in presence of a threat model). Therefore, there is a need for a technique that must be robust and should also prevent unwanted modifications. In this spirit, a watermarking technique with aforementioned characteristics has been proposed in this paper. The proposed technique makes sure that: (i) the ownership rights are protected by means of a robust watermark; and (ii) the integrity of genetic data is preserved. The proposed technique-GenInfoGuard-ensures its robustness through the "watermark encoding" in permuted values, and exhibits high decoding accuracy against various malicious attacks.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Top Level Architecture of GenInfoGuard.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Double Stranded DNA Sequence Alignment before and after Watermarking.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Data Recovery after Insertion Attack.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Comparison of Watermark Decoding Accuracy of GenInfoGuard with TFBW, RBW, and BIW after Insertion Attack.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Data Recovery after Deletion Attack.
Fig 6
Fig 6. Comparison of Watermark Decoding Accuracy of GenInfoGuard with TFBW, RBW, and BIW for Deletion Attack.
Fig 7
Fig 7. Data Recovery after Alteration Attacks.
Fig 8
Fig 8. Comparison of Watermark Decoding Accuracy of GenInfoGuard with TFBW, RBW, and BIW for Alteration Attack.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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