Perceptual hashing

Perceptual hashing is the use of an algorithm that produces a snippet or fingerprint of various forms of multimedia.[1][2] Perceptual hash functions are analogous if features are similar, whereas cryptographic rely on the avalanche effect of a small change in input value creating a drastic change in output value. Perceptual hash functions are widely used to protect against copyright infringement and digital forensics because of the ability to have a correlation between hashes so you can compare and map source data. For example, Wikipedia could maintain a database of text hashes of popular online books or articles for which the authors hold copyrights to, anytime a Wikipedia user uploads an online book or article that has a copyright, the hashes will be almost exactly the same and could be flagged as plagiarism. This same flagging system can be used for any multimedia or text file.

References

  1. Buldas, Ahto, Andres Kroonmaa, and Risto Laanoja. "Keyless Signatures' Infrastructure: How to Build Global Distributed Hash-Trees - Springer." Keyless Signatures' Infrastructure: How to Build Global Distributed Hash-Trees - Springer. Springer Link, 18 Oct. 2013. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.
  2. Klinger, Evan, and David Starkweather. "PHash." .org: Home of , the Open Source Perceptual Hash Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

External links

pHash - an open source perceptual hash library