PRNU-leaks: facts and remedies

Abstract

We address the problem of information leakage from estimates of the PhotoResponse Non-Uniformity (PRNU) fingerprints of a sensor. This leakage may compromise privacy in forensic scenarios, as it may reveal information from the images used in the PRNU estimation. We propose a new way to compute the information-theoretic leakage that is based on embedding synthetic PRNUs, and presesent affordable approximations and bounds. We also propose a new compact measure for the performance in membership inference tests. Finally, we analyze two potential countermeasures against leakage: binarization, which was already used in PRNU-storage contexts, and equalization, which is novel and offers better performance. Theoretical results are validated with experiments carried out on a real-world image dataset.