Search

Copy-move forgery (CMF) is a variety of image faking in which parts of an image are duplicated and added inside the same image. Up to now, many applications have been proposed to expose this type of forgery. These algorithms were developed to detect suspicious images containing CMF. However, when attacks such as compression and noise addition are applied to the image in such forgery operations, CMF detection (CMFD) approaches have difficulty in recognizing the fake images. This study presents a keypoint-based CMFD approach that performs well under various post-transaction changes. This is achieved by extracting scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) and KAZE features using the colour channels in the HSV colour space instead of greyscale images. After the SIFT and KAZE descriptors have been extracted from each colour channel, they are combined to form the feature that is used in the matching step to detect similar regions. Thus, the proposed CMFD approach is more effective because stronger features are obtained when they are combined. The test findings on the Image Manipulation Dataset (IMD) demonstrated that our technique had successfully identified CMF under a variety of post-transaction alterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By drawing on ethnographic and historical accounts of migrant smuggling and forgery from the smugglers' perspectives, this essay shifts the focus from a state-centric understanding of smuggling as a criminal activity conducted by 'greedy' individuals and 'mafia rings', to a specific form of practice that operates through a series of concrete material techniques. It argues that smuggling recognises and reworks the material and technological features of borders which are vulnerable to reappropriation. These vulnerabilities inherent to the materialisation of abstract notions such as borders are understood and discussed as 'reproducibility', 'repetition', and 'imitation'. Smuggling not only reconfigures the apparatus of borders to provide support for those who are denied access to mobility, but also can teach us something about a specific mode of critique that I call a material mode of critique. The material mode of critiquing borders goes beyond a discursive mode which mostly locates politicians, academics, and activists as the critics of border politics. This mode can open up new possibilities of thinking about and against borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses several promising policies in the electronic parts industry for disrupting the flow of counterfeit electronic parts. A socio-technical electronic part supply-chain network model has been developed to facilitate policy analysis. The model is used to understand the technical and social dynamics associated with the insertion of counterfeit electronic components into critical systems (e.g., aerospace, transportation, defense, and infrastructure) and to analyze the impact of various anti-counterfeiting policies and practices. This network model is used to assess the effectiveness of mandatory original component manufacturer buyback programs and the debarment of distributors found to provide counterfeit components. In this agent-based model, each participant in the supply chain is modeled as an independent entity governed by its own motivations and constraints. The entities in the model include the original component manufacturers, distributors, system integrators, operators, and counterfeiters. Each of these entities has dynamic behaviors and connections to the other agents. Since time is an integral factor (lead times and inventory levels can be drivers behind the appearance of counterfeits), the simulation is dynamic. The model allows the prediction of the risk of counterfeits making it into an operator's system and the length of time between relevant supply-chain events/disruptions and the appearance of counterfeits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2018 to 2021, seizures of counterfeit oxycodone pills containing non-pharmaceutical fentanyl or other novel synthetic opioids increased significantly contributing to continuing increases in overdose mortality in Northern America. Evidence suggests that counterfeit pills are distributed through cryptomarkets. This article presents data regarding the availability and characteristics of oxycodone pills advertised on one major cryptomarket between January and March 2022. Collected data were processed using a dedicated Named Entity Recognition algorithm to identify oxycodone listings and categorized them as either counterfeit or pharmaceutical. Frequency of listings, average number of pills advertised, average prices per milligram, number of sales, and geographic indicators of shipment origin and destination were analyzed. In total, 2,665 listings were identified as oxycodone. 48.2% (1,285/2,665) of these listings were categorized as counterfeit oxycodone, advertising a total of 652,699 pills (93,242.7 pills per datapoint) offered at a lower price than pharmaceutical pills. Our data indicate the presence of a large volume of counterfeit oxycodone pills both in retail- and wholesale-level amounts mostly targeting US and Canadian customers. These exploratory findings call for more research to develop epidemiological surveillance systems to track counterfeit pill and other drug availability on the Dark web environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's web represents the most extensive engineered system ever created by humankind. Web security is critical to web application providers and end-users. Burp Suite is established as a state-of-the-art and fully featured set of tools for web vulnerability scanners. This paper presents a novel approach using state of the art Machine Learning algorithms applied to the Burp Suite extension. These algorithms were used to scan for: SQL injection, Cross-Site Request Forgery, and XML External Entity vulnerabilities in university web applications. The results show that the best algorithm is Long Short-Term Memory and that the targeted website is safe to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, scores of supposedly ‘ancient’ manuscripts have been seized by police in Turkey. Although reports of the seizures regularly feature in the country’s media, the ‘ancient’ manuscript industry has received only sporadic scholarly attention. As a consequence, very little is currently known about the scope and scale of this persistent, peculiar, and now decade-old phenomenon. To understand the various factors that facilitate its growth, this article investigates how the trade, its participants, and the manuscripts themselves have been represented in the Turkish media over the past decade. Through a review of approximately ninety-three news articles published online between 2012 and 2022, I argue that the trade in ‘ancient’ biblical manuscripts in Turkey is legitimized by a narrative of the phenomenon that is fuelled by sensationalism, uncritical reporting, and an indifference to expert opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copy–move forgery is one of the most common image forgeries in digital images. In copy–move forgery, some object or region of an object is copied and duplicated in other parts of the same image. Hence, there is a need to develop an accurate and robust forgery detection approach for various image forensics applications. In this article, an improved salient keypoint selection approach for copy–move forgery detection has been proposed. Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and KAZE keypoint features have been extracted from the input image and salient keypoints have been selected for improving the robustness of the proposed algorithm. Salient keypoint selection reduces the feature descriptor matching time for finding region duplication in the given image. To improve the detection accuracy of the proposed approach, selective search-based region proposals have been introduced to create a bounding box on the input image. Feature descriptor matching is performed between keypoints which are located inside two different bounding boxes. The proposed approach has been evaluated on two benchmark datasets, CoMoFoD and MICC-F220 and detection results outperformed state-of-the-art techniques under different geometric transformations and post-processing operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counterfeit currency can have detrimental effects on the economy of a country. The effects include inflation, as well as black marketing and misfortunes to commerce and administrations. This study analyzed the genuine and confiscated counterfeit Malaysian RM100 banknotes using Video Spectral Comparator (VSC), chemical profiling using Attenuated Total Reflectance-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) and pattern recognition techniques of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Linear Square-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA). VSC analysis revealed substantial morphological variations in the confiscated counterfeit samples than that of the genuine banknotes, as well as the standards prescribed by the Bank Negara Malaysia. ATR-FTIR analysis further revealed marked differences in the spectra between the counterfeit and the genuine banknotes, particularly in the fingerprint region of 1800–650 cm−1. While the PCA and PLS-DA successfully discriminated the genuine and counterfeit banknotes, further analysis on the counterfeit samples alone failed to categorically discriminate them into separate groups. Therefore, the fact that the counterfeit banknotes may originate from the same common source cannot be overruled, consistent with the relatively small circulation of the Malaysian currency. The procedure of using the non-destructive ATR-FTIR in combination with chemometrics techniques utilized here may prove useful for unveiling the current trends, as well as developing prediction ability to investigate future encounters of counterfeited Malaysian banknotes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have migrants and other displaced and internally excluded persons used dissimulation and self-forgery in service of mobility? How can we read an aesthetics of disappearance as more than just an aesthetical choice but as a source of activism? Following Jacques Rancière [The politics of aesthetics (G. Rockhill. Trans.). Continuum. (Original Work Published in, 2000)], I understand that such aesthetic acts are capable of creating 'new modes of sense perception' and, in doing so, produce alternative forms of political subjectivity. In this essay, I compare migrant self-representations and creative tactics of camouflage, mimicry, and dissembling with public practices, while looking at the extraterritorial space of the makeshift camp as a paradigm for preserving invisibility and anonymity. And yet, it is not just that aesthetic acts have the potential to produce novel forms of political subjectivity, as Rancière understood, but that, in order for the latter to be true, the equation needs to be reversed: political subjects must first be recognized as aesthetic subjects. As I place the multimedia work of Cold War East German artist Cornelia Schleime in conversation with the contemporary glitch art – drawings, paintings, video – of Kon Trubkovich, who was born in Moscow and left, at age eleven, following the Chernobyl disaster, I argue that to reorient the terms of visibility, it becomes necessary for subject-producers to stage the gaze that would otherwise objectify them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, real estate markets hold and contribute a fair share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any country. The real estate transactions generate revenue in stamp duties, which goes directly into the government kitty. However, this suffers from land document forgery and fraudulent activities due to a lack of an efficient, distributed, and completely digital system. This paper proposes a blockchain-based framework for digitizing property transactions that mitigate the risk of document forgery and other fraudulent activities. Over time, the amount of these transactions can become overwhelming, thus increasing the number of blocks. The proposed framework is based on blockchain technology to decentralize the complete ecosystem. The framework encompasses all major activities for property transactions. The framework uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) that is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) swarm network, to integrate different region registry offices in the state/country seamlessly. In order to make it secure, a consensus algorithm is proposed that reduces overhead transmissions for multicasting nodes by about 50%. The message exchange communication overhead also reduces by 54.86%. The time taken for the consensus algorithm is around 53.7% lesser than the Proof-of-Work mechanism in which all nodes participate in consensus and 10% lesser than the existing load-based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copy move forgery (CMF) of digital images is the frequently adapted tampering by simply copying a region of the image and pasting it on to the same image using user-friendly image processing tools. Most of the existing key-point (KP) based CMF detection algorithms involve a hefty number of KPs and huge sets of feature descriptors, which increase their computational burden. In addition, the identified KPs may not spread over all regions of the image and the classical clustering techniques may not optimally classify the feature space into cluster space, thereby affecting the accuracy of the results. This paper suggests a new CMF detection method that considers a small number of the strongest KPs, chosen from both Difference of Gaussian (DoG)-based KPs and FAST-corner KPs, evaluates Scale Invariant Features Transform (SIFT) descriptors, applies discrete wavelet transform for dimensionality reduction, and employs football game based optimization (FGBO). The FGBO belongs to the family of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms, and is used for effectively classifying the feature space into cluster space, with a view to overcoming the drawbacks of classical methods. This article exhibits the superior performances of the developed method over existing methods by presenting results on 500 digital images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, researchers explored various aspects of the operational practices of online illicit market operations through the Open and Dark Web for various physical and digital goods. Far less work has considered the presence of counterfeit identity documents for sale within these markets, or the process of advertising, purchasing, producing, selling, and delivering these materials. This study utilized a qualitative crime script analysis of 19 vendors advertising counterfeit documents on the Open and Dark Web, focusing on the advertising, actualization, and delivery of various products. The pricing for various document types and the locations they claim to reflect citizenship of were examined, along with the variations dependent on where the product was advertised. The findings demonstrated that the market for identity documents shared common practices to other online markets, highlighting the value of crime script analyses to understand the distribution of goods through illicit markets generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detection of fake photos is a serious concern since general users can easily create with mobile apps and computer software. In this paper, a novel method that can detect fake photos accurately is proposed. RGB color model permutations are considered and non-decimated shift-invariant wavelet transform is applied. The proposed method extracts features using the Markov process and texture operator based on co-occurrence in both the spatial and frequency domains. The feature vector dimension is reduced by using an infinite feature selection algorithm and feature selection provides quality features to improve a detection accuracy and reduce a classification model training time. The experimental analysis is performed on four photo forgery datasets and demonstrated the accuracy of the proposed scheme is outstanding for both types of forgery, splicing and copy-move when compared with previous forgery detection schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of archaeologists is to study the material culture of the past to pass it on to current and future generations. Each object preserves a memory, deriving from its production, its use, its breaking and deposition. This memory can also be reactivated in the modern and contemporary world through trade, collecting and exhibition of various artefacts. In order to preserve and safeguard this memory, synonymous with past civilizations and as an example for present and future ones, contemporary archaeologists are called upon to study the most current trends in society in order to prevent illegal activities (such as clandestine excavations, forgeries, trafficking, theft, etc.) and to preserve the original idea of history and culture. Through a multidisciplinary approach (historical, archaeological, anthropological, legal), this contribution presents some activities undertaken by the Paduan archaeological school, focusing on the analysis of the phenomenon of falsification, its positive and negative implications, leading to a proposal for the definition of a new branch of archaeology at the service of contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the distinction between conservation outputs and outcomes to frame thinking about conservation ethics, decision-making and practice. It proposes that prescriptive ethical principles or their narrow interpretation do not necessarily deliver outputs that meet desired conservation outcomes such as 'authenticity'. It draws analogies between philosophical definitions of art forgery, conservation case studies and cases of known forgeries, to debate whether heritage conservation could be construed as a 'forger's art' and, despite the contradiction of terms, conservation ethics as an ethics of forgery. Viewed from the perspective of output-outcome inconsistencies, the paper argues there are four potential types of unintentional conservation forgery. It proposes that effective mitigations of this risk reside in the broader interpretation of conservation concepts drawing from metaphysics and other branches of philosophy, and a shift to more outcomes-based conservation ethics. The paper concludes with initial reflections on what a more outcomes-based conservation ethics might look like and the opportunities that such a shift would present to the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can the institutional practices of libraries and museums tell us about the ways in which our culture conceives of knowledge and aesthetics? How might their architectures, and our navigation of them, map upon the distinctions we make in our minds, dividing real from fake, legitimate from illegitimate, art from fact? This article lays out the conceptual and spatial constructs that are the Library and the Museum, detailing how even trivial norms within them uphold crucial philosophical distinctions, for example, surrounding authorship and authenticity. It then examines two recent cases of forgery in order to reveal how and why thinking across the thresholds of these distinctions, tenuous as they are, can provoke moral and legal consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research critically reflects on the way that the 2018 FIFA World Cup Sustainability Strategy was implemented for Russian host cities through case studies of the cities of Kazan and Kaliningrad. The authors employ the term "mega-events simulacrum" for actions that are a substitute for the social, economic and environmental changes required by mega-events, leaving the real needs of the local host communities unfulfilled. Comparative analysis shows that in contrast to Kaliningrad, the city of Kazan made a step forward in the employment of sustainability practices. However, most of them were imitative by nature to meet the rigid FIFA requirements but did not serve as a sustainability legacy for their own citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The keypoint-based copy-move forgery (CMF) detection is one of the most widely used CMF detection methods; however the keypoint-based CMF detection method cannot effectively and efficiently detect the small and extremely smooth tampered regions in the input image. A CMF detection method is proposed to tackle the above mention problem. In the proposed CMF detection method, the contrast of the input image is adjusted using the dynamic histogram equalization (DHE) method. A speeded-up robust feature (SURF) descriptor is used to extract features from the tampered image and matched using Euclidean distance. The novel modified density-based spatial clustering of application with noise (mDBSCAN) clustering technique is applied to the matched features to generate the binary mask followed by the detection of CMF regions. Three standard datasets, MICC-F220, MICC-F2000, and CoMoFoD, are used to evaluate the proposed CMF detection method performance. The experimental results indicate that the proposed CMF detection method outshines the state-of-the-art CMF detection method in terms of precision (P) and recall (R). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the development and application of a method based on synchronous fluorescence coupled with chemometric tools to classify different vodka samples. The chemometric methods used encompasses partial least squares – discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), and support vector machine (SVM). A total of 18 authentic vodkas (3 brands, 6 of each brand, all donated by the producers) and six counterfeit vodka samples were used to validate the method. The samples suspect of falsification were seized in a police action that has occurred in the state of São Paulo, Brazil named Operation Chicago. The spectrofluorescence dataset was processing using the centering on the mean before to apply principal component analysis (PCA), which did not correctly discriminate the samples. Considering that the PCA suffers from the presence of outliers, robust PCA was applied, which detected outliers. After this undesirable detection, the transformation of the spatial signal was applied, and the robust PCA has applied again and did not detect outliers. The PLS-DA and SVM were able to classify all the vodka samples correctly in authentic and counterfeit. Both methods showed the highest values for the accuracy and Kappa index, as well the sensitivity and specificity, respectively. However, the KNN has not been able to correctly classify the samples. Finally, only the SVM based on radial base function was able to classify all brands of vodka samples correctly using synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital multimedia images are treated as evidences in the court of law around the globe, but manipulation and tampering of photographs have become common due to the use of efficient image editing software. The most common counterfeit technique is the copy-move forgery (CMF) where a part of an original image is cloned on to the same image once or multiple times so that it may not be detected easily by human eyes. In this paper, an efficient as well as a robust algorithm for the detection of CMF is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the suspicious image undergoes block tiling and features are extracted from each block by applying singular value decomposition (SVD) and discrete orthonormal Stockwell transform (DOST). Feature vectors obtained are lexicographically sorted and similarities of image blocks are identified by two threshold values. Simulated results show that the proposed algorithm is more invariant and robust to post-processing operations like Gaussian blurring, Gaussian white noise contamination, rotation and JPEG compression in comparison with other state-of-the-art techniques. The method offers high detection accuracy rate (DAR) with less computational complexity, even for detecting multiple copy-move forgeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic growth sparked fierce competition in early twelfth-century Metz. One community vying to get ahead was the suburban Benedictine abbey of Saint-Clément. This article examines the competition the monks faced within Metz and traces how well they fared against their rivals. In particular, it shows that competition from other urban groups, both clerical and lay, was intense. It further reveals that disputes among these groups led to vandalism, forgery and legal wrangling as each party tried to win over the bishop, whose authority often decided the outcome of individual disputes. Under these circumstances, the monks of Saint-Clément did not achieve all their aims. Yet, the article argues, the monks' limited success is nevertheless significant. It reveals how stiff such intra-urban competition was, as well as the impact suburban monasteries could have on shaping the growing cities of medieval Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1640s posed an existential threat to English trade interests in Russia. Tsar Aleksei's accession to the throne in 1645 finally gave voice to native merchant opposition to the generously privileged Muscovy Company as the new government embarked on an aggressive protectionist course. By 1646, the Company in London and Moscow was pushing back against the stripping of its ancient right to duty-free trade. Resistance, however, was futile without the traditional support of the English monarch, which the London-based Muscovy Company failed to secure at this time. Instead, the Russia merchants found themselves under direct attack by the king himself as traitors. So would claim the royal envoy Luke Nightingale in a secret oral message to Aleksei, accompanied by letters from Charles of dubious provenance. These largely unexplored communications are fascinating for how they draw Russia into the dramatic orbit of the English Civil War. At the same time, they raise the possibility of documentary tampering and forgery in furtherance of personal and/or royalist objectives, while prompting consideration of how the collapse of royal authority in these years challenged merchants, trade, and diplomats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the religious controversy between Catholics and Protestants during the sixteenth century over the doctrine of justification, a primary issue had its origins in the teachings of Scripture as well as in church history. Theological exponents from both sides looked at writings, biographies, and sermons from the Middle Ages in order to make their argument for continuity in some way or other. This was the case for Waldensianism that according to Protestant propaganda was in opposition to the official Church but similarly claimed ancient origins that went back to the Apostolic Age. By looking at extant early Waldensian sermons from the Middle Ages, it is possible to see that this popular narrative was founded upon a forgery. The study shows the need for caution when approaching primary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and why do policymakers engage in currency warfare by counterfeiting their enemy's currency during Middle Eastern conflicts? Currency warfare, defined as the application of weaponized monetary or military force directed against an enemy's currency, is a common feature of Middle Eastern conflicts, but its study remains peripheral. This article explores when and why policymakers contemplate or implement currency warfare via counterfeiting by examining: the 1953 American-backed coup in Iran, the 1990-1991 Gulf War, and the Iranian counterfeiting of the Yemeni rial. This study argues that states weaponize counterfeit currency when they perceive a threat to their national security interest and when they have a strategy of subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-forensic techniques aim to prevent, hinder or corrupt the forensic process of evidence acquisition, its analysis, and/or its admissibility. File systems are at the spotlight of almost every forensic investigation. The Linux B-tree file system (Btrfs) offers a paradigm shift in file system design by providing simple administration, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability without loss of performance. However, the potential of Btrfs for forensics examination and its resistance to anti-forensic activities was not investigated before. This paper covers this gap by analysing the forensics value of Btrfs and its robustness against anti-forensics activities. The experimental results suggest that Btrfs offers strong hurdles to many anti-forensic attacks. These include making it difficult to securely wipe files, disallowing hiding data in reserved locations of the file system data structures, and so on. Based on our findings, even a corrupt Btrfs volume could contain remnants of deletion of small files, hidden data in reserved locations and magic string forgery. Furthermore, forensic tools meant for Btrfs investigation must be augmented to support automated forensic analysis of possible hidden data in boot sector, file slack, volume slack and mount-point directories, MAC-DTS forgery, and sparse files. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores fake ads: social media posts created by influencers that are designed look like ads but are unpaid. An experiment finds that consumers' perceptions of fake and real ads varies based on their social media experience. Influencers may also be seen as pushy, which reduces attitudes toward the brand featured in the post. Brands should monitor social media for fake ads featuring their brand so that these posts can be removed before they damage the brand's reputation. This research is limited by its reliance on Facebook ads; social media platform could influence findings and invites future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses topics of forgery, Virgilian allusion, and schoolboy joke in the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," by William Shakespeare. Also cited are the play's five different plotlines, Shakespeare's inspiration from Greek and Latin texts, and the criticism by Charles and Michelle Martindale on Shakespeare in their work "Shakespeare and the Use of Antiquity."

Using data on 32 actors and ties among them drawn from available court files, we combine analytical sociology with statistical models for networks in order to analyse a case of a counterfeit alcohol distribution network from the Czech Republic. We formulate a theory of action and identify relational mechanisms which could explain how the structure of the network emerged and describe. We use the exponential random graph model to test these mechanisms. The analysis reveals that the two actors capable of manufacturing the poisonous mixture were considerably though not optimally proximate to others enabling fast distribution of the mixture. Our model results that the structure was formed by mechanisms of triadic closure, negative tendency to concentrate ties, and tie translation of pre-existing ties into operational ties. We conclude with the discussion of the implications our approach for the study of criminal networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image manipulation has eroded our trust of digital images, with more subtle forgery methods posing an ever-increasing challenge to the integrity of images and their authenticity. Over recent years, a significant research contribution has been dedicated to devising new techniques for countering various image forgery attacks. In this article, a survey of such research contributions has been conducted by following a well-defined systematic process. A total of 66 primary studies published before July 2017 was selected from five different electronic databases using a careful scrutinizing process. Four research questions have been formulated that capture various aspects of the identified primary studies. The field background required to understand the evolution of digital image forgeries is also presented. The aim of this systematic survey is to gain insights into the current research on the detection of these forgeries by comprehensively analysing the selected studies in order to answer this predefined set of research questions. This survey also discusses various challenges that need to be addressed, and has recommendations for possible future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copy-move forgery is one of the most popular tampering artefacts in digital images. However, tampering effect in digital images makes the authentication of the processing as untrustworthy. In this paper, a combination of Fourier-Mellin and Zernike moments (FMZM) Transform is proposed which detects the copy-move region with high-speed and low-computational complexity. Here, initially an image is segmented into various blocks using marker controlled watershed management and from that proposed FMZM feature extraction is used which detects duplication. The detected regions are matched with the Dense Depth Reconstruction based lexicographically sorting. Finally, tampered outliers presented at the data are removed through RANSAC (RANdom Sample Consensus) algorithm, in which removed false matches are verified with the morphological operators. The efficiency of proposed method is measured by various performance metrics and this method earned up to 97.56%, 99.98%, and 97.12% for precision, recall, and F1-score performance, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines epistolary accounts by Berenguela and Blanche of Castile of the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Building on previous assertions that Berenguela's letter is a forgery, and through close comparison with the three surviving male eyewitness battle accounts, this article argues the letters of Berenguela and Blanche – in the form in which they survive – are confections based on original letters. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa's mythical status and standing as a watershed event within the narrative of Gran Reconquista is understood to have been largely shaped by three male-authored chronicle accounts: Chronica Latina regum Castelle (1239), Chronicon mundi (1239) and De rebus Hispaniae (1243). In asserting these letters are confected accounts, in circulation by the 1220s, this article argues that battle commemoration began in the immediate aftermath of the Christian victory, and that female voices were recognised by contemporaries as a viable tool for commemoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seventeenth-century London press proliferated titles purporting to reveal new truths gleaned from secret papers and private mailbags. These books, whether political, religious, or scientific in content, promised to reveal to the reader the complex (and sometimes scandalous) inner workings of political, social, and natural processes. They did so via the mechanism of the "perfect true copy": the printed book or pamphlet that was (or claimed to be) an exact copy of private manuscript papers, whether nabbed or voluntarily released from the mailbags and closets of the prominent, the highborn, the powerful, or the learned. This article investigates the relations between printed copy and manuscript original in two cases where medical, natural philosophical, and political controversy overlapped: the mid-1650s posthumous publication (and forgery) of works by the astrological medical practitioner Nicholas Culpeper and the performance of Valentine Greatrakes, the Irish Stroker, as a faith healer in Restoration London. In each case, controversialists pointed to manuscript material as a secure record that backed up points being made in printed pamphlets and books, even inviting readers to check manuscript originals physically (often referred to as "copy": that from which printed copies were made). These case studies engage with questions of gender and women's credibility in print, authoring, and authorizing, both texts and medical expertise. Within the world of cheap vernacular medical print, and pamphlet controversy, women themselves, as well as male associates, such as stationers and husbands, used women's knowledge and domestic positions—which encompassed their connections to manuscript copy—to certify printed texts and cures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers drive market demand for nondeceptive counterfeits and, therefore, are at least partly responsible for its consequences. Clarke's situational crime prevention shows that removing consumer demand for nondeceptive counterfeits will decrease its associated criminal activity. Sykes and Matza's techniques of neutralization theory is used to identify each of the five ways consumers may rationalize the decision to purchase nondeceptive counterfeits. A unique way of deterring the buying and selling of nondeceptive counterfeits on the Internet is presented, leveraging top-level domains (TLDs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, as Tutino reveals in this study, the documents and relics presented in favor of Giovanni's canonization were almost certainly forged, and eventually the case was thrown out. That is, the inquisitors assigned to evaluate the evidence in Giovanni's case (chapters 6 and 7) were able to demonstrate that the legends and relics attributed to Giovanni were almost certainly recent forgeries-they were not historically authentic. In this lucidly written and engaging microhistory, Stefania Tutino follows the attempt by Carlo Calà, a seventeenth-century noble, jurist, and high-ranking member of the Neapolitan elite, to have his legendary ancestor, Giovanni Calà, canonized. [Extracted from the article]

Pseudo-Paracelsus: Forgery and Early Modern Alchemy, Medicine, and Natural Philosophy: Edited by Didier Kahn and Hiro Hirai. The number of forged and doubtful works makes us wonder to what extent the authors considered themselves to be creating forgeries of Paracelsus, and whether they realised that they were bringing Paracelsus closer to their worldview rather than transmitting Paracelsus's own views. In a field already abundant in research on Paracelsus and Pseudo-Paracelsus, this volume's objective is to lay the foundations for a systematic study of Paracelsus forgeries. [Extracted from the article]

Adoption of modern agricultural inputs in Africa remains low, restraining agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. Low quality agricultural inputs may in part explain low adoption rates, but only if farmers are aware that some inputs are low quality. We report the results of laboratory tests of the quality of glyphosate herbicide in Uganda and investigate whether farmers' beliefs about the prevalence of counterfeiting and adulteration are consistent with the prevalence of low quality in their local market. We find that the average bottle in our sample is missing 15 per cent of the active ingredient and 31 per cent of samples contain less than 75 per cent of the ingredient advertised. Farmers believe 41 per cent of herbicide is counterfeit or adulterated. Beliefs are significantly correlated with quality at the local market level, but beliefs remain inaccurate, adjusting for only a fraction of actual differences in quality. Price is also significantly correlated with quality in local markets, but prices also adjust for only a fraction of quality differences. Although, like fertiliser and hybrid maize seed, herbicide in Uganda is low quality, herbicide use is substantially higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of fraud on the world economy is significant. As fraud has evolved it has become more organized and increasingly cyber-enabled and committed across borders of law enforcement jurisdictions. The technological demands facing fraud investigators are increasing. Yet, little attention has been given to how forensic photography can help tackle emerging crime types, like fraud. This study reviews literature surrounding forensic photography and provides an up to date and collective narrative. This article focuses on the advancements in photography and how imaging-science techniques can apply to a fraud investigation. Photographic practice plays a key role in many crime investigations but must embrace continual change to ensure that it remains relevant to modern policing. Fresh approaches are essential and practitioners must fully utilize new technologies and adapt to tackle the increasingly demanding scope of fraud types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital images are easily forged due to the availability of powerful imaging hardware and image editing software. Copy-move and splicing are the most common type of image forgeries and various post-processing operations including geometric transformation (resizing and rotation) are employed by the attacker to conceal the visual traces of doctoring operations. In this brief paper, a blind algorithm is proposed to detect global rescaling operations and estimate the rescale factors using reciprocal singular value coefficients. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the algorithm under different rescale factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image processing requires an estimation of position, direction and illumination of the objects present in a scene. Nowadays, digital image manipulations have experienced a remarkable growth. These image manipulations can be detected by various forgery detection techniques that have been developed in the past few years. We describe a forgery detection technique based on estimations of multiple light source directions. This method uses a pixel patch from the image region to estimate the source light vector. The implementation is done for images where one and more light sources are available in the scene. The proposed technique is able to identify image forgery in terms of elevation angle α obtained from a source of light and surface normal. This method is tested for both outdoor and indoor images under certain known parameters. The novelty of our method is that photo manipulation detection is done using a multiple light source detection approach. We demonstrate that the proposed technique produces accurate results by making certain assumptions about surface properties and illumination parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the phenomenal development in processing power and the dropping cost of high-resolution imaging devices and computer hardware, coupled with the availability of sophisticated user-friendly image manipulation programs, the instances of forgery in digital images has increased manifold. In the current scenario, Digital Image Forensics is an area that has gained immense importance and is instrumental for detecting image forgery. Digital image forgery detection includes Blind or Passive techniques that don't require any previous information of an image, as the tampered image carries inconsistencies that can be used to detect forgery. Imaging devices and processing techniques, however different from each other, carry a consistent pattern in the image which, if tampered would introduce a deviation from the original pattern. This deviation enables one to detect forgery of images. In this paper, various passive forgery detection techniques are discussed with a special focus on pixel- and physics-based techniques. This paper aims is to deliver an overview of emerging techniques in the field of Image Forgery Detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world, in which measurements, indices and agreed-upon standards are ubiquitous, Bessy and Chateauraynaud's work on experts and counterfeiters has gained new relevance. The French social scientists provide a rich theory on the sense of things, explaining how experts evaluate the authenticity of objects. Along with the mobilisation of a shared language and stabilised criteria, the sense of things generates from everyday interactions between experts and objects. While social scientists tend to prioritise the study of the commonly-accepted aspects of evaluation, the concept of the sense of things directs attention to the subtle micro interactions and sensory experiences on the ground. This process can initiate shifts in stabilised evaluations of the true and false. This article presents the central theoretical arguments of the book "Experts et Faussaires" (Experts and Counterfeiters) and sketches their relevance for the study of environmental phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we argue for closer intellectual attention to the intersection between the unstable materiality of urban spaces on the one hand, and anxieties about the materiality of official documents on the other. Based on initial evidence from two cities in Africa, namely Nairobi and Johannesburg, we have observed that official documents as material objects matters most in precisely those parts of the city where formal state and civil society institutions appears most absent, i.e. those marginal or estuarial urban spaces, characterised by precarity, informality and mobility, where the majority of African urban residents reside. This is because anxieties about credibility, legitimacy and belonging are most acute in precisely these grey spaces. Yet we argue that the preoccupation with the materiality of these documents does not only reflect broader anxieties about inclusion into or exclusion from the wider urban economy. Instead we suggest that the materiality of documents is more deeply implicated into the unstable material conditions which characterise these estuarial spaces. As these estuarial spaces manifest fluid and sometimes illegible forms of policing and social order, so the variable material qualities of documents simultaneously proffers or eschews the credibility of the bearer in particular situations. This ambiguous relationship to absolute status subverts the bio-political pretensions of contemporary institutions of government, but serves as a crucial tactical vocabulary in navigating the precarious and unstable materiality of the contemporary African city. While the evidence presented here is drawn from ethnographic research in two such 'urban estuaries', we suggest that these observations might resonate more broadly, and might open up new avenues for thinking about the relationship between the material and the bio-political in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive dependence on digital images has raised the need for its forensic analysis. Median filtering, due to its nonlinear nature, is extensively used in image antiforensics to hide the evidence of image forgery. There exist several methods based on the Markov transition probability matrix to detect median filtering. In this article, to detect median filtering, a content-adaptive thresholding approach is applied on pixel intensity residuals and features are extracted using a Markov transition probability matrix. This modified approach provides better results even on low-resolution and highly compressed images in comparison to existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I wonder in this article about the presence of Cluny in Spain during the reign of Ferdinand I, a presence that has recently been completely questioned. I examine the payment of a census to Cluny, the mentions of funeral commemoration, the origin of the monk named Galindus of Clunia, theLiber canticorum and horarumof Queen Sancha, and finally, a text by Peter Damian relating to an episode in a Muslim town from Hispania. I conclude that “the claim that these connections did not exist when they are attested to in several sources, when the contact existed not only during the reign of Alfonso VI, their son, but also with Ferdinand's father and his two brothers, does not seem credible to me”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perforated number is an important anti-counterfeiting technique widely used in recent years in security document for protecting document number from being forged. However, forgery detection of perforated number is still made by means of manual inspection, which is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. In this paper, we propose an automatic method for verifying the authenticity of perforated number by analysing the shape of the perforated holes and their alignments in horizontal and vertical direction. First, the image with perforated number is captured by the 10–20× optical zoom, and then the perforated holes are segmented by the maximum between-cluster variance. Second, each perforated hole is labelled by the connected component analysis and then fitted as a circle using the least-squares method for determining the parameters of each hole. Lastly, we propose two criteria to verify the authenticity of the perforated number. One is the new defined roundness measurement called local feature, which is denoted by computing the distance between the contour of the perforated hole and its fitted circle. The other is the measurement of the alignments of all perforated holes in horizontal and vertical direction, which is called global feature. The alignments are determined by means of K-means clustering method. The experimental results show that the proposed method has the correct detection rate over 92%, which means the proposed method is an effective method for recognising the authenticity of the perforated number for security document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this digital era, anyone can easily tamper with an original image using various editing tools. One problem is that tampered images are being used for crimes such as the violation of portrait rights and the forgery of official documents. So far, various studies have been investigating a method for identification of the tampered images. However, these studies cannot detect the tampered region when geometric transforms are applied to the original image, because the geometric transform involves various interpolation methods. In this paper, we propose a new method for detecting the tampered region. First, the interpolation is applied to the image. If the image is tampered with by geometric transformation, then this re-interpolation has a role of emphasising the tampered region. Secondly, we create a detection map in the frequency domain using the re-interpolated image, which is useful to intuitively identify the tampered region. We tested our proposal on two kinds of image. One is entirely changed by geometric transforms, and the other is partially changed by geometric transforms. Our experimental result shows that we can easily catch not only the tampered region but also the distortion direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast and effective retrieval of relevant images has become an important requirement in applications that make use of digital images. The numerous sophisticated yet simple to use image editing tools available have made image tampering an easy task. This paper focuses on using spectral hashing to address aforesaid issues. Sparsification of graph Laplacian using spectral hashing is used for effective image retrieval. Copy-move forgery detection is done using Spectral-hashing-based Polar Cosine Transform (PCT). The proposed algorithm also addresses the identification of tampered regions that have been subjected to additional post-tampering manipulations. Simulation results show that the spectral-hashing-based identification of similar patches gives better results compared with some of the existing hashing techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the continued proliferation of electronic point of transaction signature recording devices, research into biometric indicators of spurious handwriting is attracting increasing interest. Whilst many investigations have focused on the static and dynamic indications of known or spurious behaviour in handwriting, little empirical research is available regarding the identification of such writings through the analysis and comparison of non-visible, intra-signature, kinematic parameters. These features are associated with segments within a signature formation where the pen is momentarily lifted from the page, such as might occur between a first and last name, or when the pen is lifted from the page for the purpose of crossing a ‘t’ or dotting an ‘i’. It is postulated that this type of feature analysis may be of value in support of examiners’ static examinations of disputed writings, and subsequent formation of opinion as to genuineness or otherwise. To investigate this, 13 skilled writers generated 195 known signature formations, which were then simulated 1560 times by eight simulators. All signatures, known and simulated, were simultaneously captured both statically and dynamically. The presence of non-visible features in the known signatures was recorded, analysed and compared with the prevalence of similar features in the simulation attempts. The duration, absolute size, straightness error and jerk (disfluency measure) of the extracted segments were examined and compared, with the result that simulated signatures showed an increase in all the above parameters, compared with the known signatures. Furthermore, the visualised representation of the non-visible, intra-signature segments illustrated an overall gross pictorial disparity between the known and simulated signatures, which may be of use during first pass authenticity examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses two aspects of the migration and crime. First, it explores the crimes associated with internal and external migrants. The analysis shows that foreigners in Russia are more often charged with low gravity crimes such as “forgery of documents” and “illegal crossing of the border.” With regard to other types of crimes there are almost no difference between Russian citizens and foreigners. Second, the paper discusses the inequality between Russians and foreigners before criminal court which could be found from the analysis of the judicial statistics. Russian judges do indeed convict foreigners more often than citizens of Russian Federation. They also more often sentence foreigners to real imprisonment and more rarely choose suspended sentence. However, when it comes to the length of incarceration term, Russian judges tend to be more lenient to migrants than to Russians and systematically give them shorter prison terms than to Russian citizens. The study is based on the dataset of 1,5 million individual cases considered by Russian Courts in 2009-first half of 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay explores non-monetary uses of money in the Pacific world circa 1800: the ways in which coins were used not as tokens of exchange, but as raw materials for artistic elaboration. Historically, to counterfeit did not necessarily have the negative forgery-falsification connotations that it has today. Counterfeiting could just mean copying; etymologically, counterfeit means ‘to make in opposition or contrast.’ Connecting Mexico to Manila to Canton to Jingdezhen to Alaska to California to Peru, this project considers economically dominated histories of relations between China and the Americas (in which the Americas are a passive source of raw materials for a dominant core power), as well as how cross-cultural appropriations of physical goods allow us to see material culture with greater precision: in particular, the relations of money and ornament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]