Patent ID: 8107668

Claim:
A method of digital differential steganography for embedding steganographic data in a digital digital media file comprising: providing an original uncompressed digital media aerie file to a processor; generating, at the processor, a master key by (i) subjecting the original uncompressed digital media file to a lossy compression process to create an unmarked compressed digital media file, and (ii) subjecting the unmarked compressed audio file to a decompression process to create an unmarked decompressed digital media file for use as the master key; identifying, at the processor, a set of candidate mark-points on the original uncompressed digital media file by (i) generating a mark-point reservoir that identifies a set of trial mark-points on the original uncompressed digital media file, (ii) marking the original uncompressed audio file with a set of trial marks at the set of the trial mark-points selected from the mark-point reservoir to create a marked digital media file, (iii) subjecting the marked digital media file to the lossy compression process to create a marked compressed digital media file, (iv) subjecting the marked compressed digital media file to the decompression process to create a marked decompressed digital media file, (v) identifying the set of candidate mark-points from the set of trial mark-points as the trial marks on the decompressed digital media file that have survived the lossy compression process and the decompression process, and (vi) updating the mark-point reservoir to include only the set of candidate mark-points; and generating, at the processor, a watermarked digital media file by: (i) embedding steganographic data at the set of candidate mark-points on the original uncompressed digital media file to create a watermarked uncompressed digital media file; (ii) subjecting the watermarked uncompressed digital media file to the lossy compression process to create a watermarked compressed digital media file, and (ii) subjecting the watermarked compressed media file to the decompression process to create the watermarked digital media file; wherein the steganographic data can be extracted from the watermarked digital media file using the master key.