[WM]: BOWS CONTEST

[Mauro Barni <barni@dii.unisi.it>]

Dear watermarker, watermark-breakers, pirates and hackers,

this e-mail is to announce the opening of the BOWS contest.
As the acronym says (BOWS = Break Our Watermarking System), the contest, that is organised within the framework of the Ecrypt
project (http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/), is a contest among watermark-breakers that are required to remove the watermark from three
images available on the interent.

Specifically, three different generic images watermarked with a system unknown to the contenders, are made available for download on
the "BOWS" web-site. Then, contenders can try to erase the watermark from all the three images by using any action they want while
granting a minimum PSNR (Peak-Signal-to-Noise-Ratio) of 30 dB between the watermarked image and the attacked one. To verify their
action, attackers can upload the attacked images (in raw format and size 512x512) on the BOWS web-site through an ad-hoc interface
and ask to run the detection process; finally they obtain as answer the result of the detection and the PSNR achieved. The attacker
who will be able to remove the watermark from all the three images with the highest (on the average) PSNR will win the contest and
receive a prize (300 $ plus a digital photocamera).
The Contest will start on December 15, 2005, and will end on March 15, 2006.
Everyone, but the staff involved in the contest set-up, can take part to BOWS.

Note that BOWS is NOT intended as an attempt to prove how well-performing the watermarking system is (we really expect that many
contenders will manage to break - or to better say, to BOWS the watermark), we just want to better understand which are the
disparate attacks, perhaps unknown at the moment, that BOWS participants will carry out to win the contest.

More information can be obtained by consulting the web site of the contest:
http://lci.det.unifi.it/BOWS

While inviting all of you to take part in the contest, I wish you a succesfull game ....

Best,

Mauro Barni

-- 

Prof. Mauro Barni
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione Universita' di Siena Via Roma 56, 53100 Siena - Italy

e-mail: barni@dii.unisi.it
phone: +39 0577 234621
fax:   +39 0577 233602


______________________________________________________________________________

Watermarking Mailing List - http://www.watermarkingworld.org/ml.html
To unsubscribe send email to "majordomo@watermarkingworld.org" with
"unsubscribe watermarking YOURMAIL" in the body.
______________________________________________________________________________