Optimization-Free Universal Watermark Forgery with Regenerative Diffusion Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhu, Chaoyi, Li, Zaitang, Yang, Renyi, Birke, Robert, Chen, Pin-Yu, Ho, Tsung-Yi, Chen, Lydia Y.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zhu, Chaoyi
Li, Zaitang
Yang, Renyi
Birke, Robert
Chen, Pin-Yu
Ho, Tsung-Yi
Chen, Lydia Y.
author_facet Zhu, Chaoyi
Li, Zaitang
Yang, Renyi
Birke, Robert
Chen, Pin-Yu
Ho, Tsung-Yi
Chen, Lydia Y.
contents Watermarking becomes one of the pivotal solutions to trace and verify the origin of synthetic images generated by artificial intelligence models, but it is not free of risks. Recent studies demonstrate the capability to forge watermarks from a target image onto cover images via adversarial optimization without knowledge of the target generative model and watermark schemes. In this paper, we uncover a greater risk of an optimization-free and universal watermark forgery that harnesses existing regenerative diffusion models. Our proposed forgery attack, PnP (Plug-and-Plant), seamlessly extracts and integrates the target watermark via regenerating the image, without needing any additional optimization routine. It allows for universal watermark forgery that works independently of the target image's origin or the watermarking model used. We explore the watermarked latent extracted from the target image and visual-textual context of cover images as priors to guide sampling of the regenerative process. Extensive evaluation on 24 scenarios of model-data-watermark combinations demonstrates that PnP can successfully forge the watermark (up to 100% detectability and user attribution), and maintain the best visual perception. By bypassing model retraining and enabling adaptability to any image, our approach significantly broadens the scope of forgery attacks, presenting a greater challenge to the security of current watermarking techniques for diffusion models and the authority of watermarking schemes in synthetic data generation and governance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_06018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimization-Free Universal Watermark Forgery with Regenerative Diffusion Models
Zhu, Chaoyi
Li, Zaitang
Yang, Renyi
Birke, Robert
Chen, Pin-Yu
Ho, Tsung-Yi
Chen, Lydia Y.
Multimedia
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Watermarking becomes one of the pivotal solutions to trace and verify the origin of synthetic images generated by artificial intelligence models, but it is not free of risks. Recent studies demonstrate the capability to forge watermarks from a target image onto cover images via adversarial optimization without knowledge of the target generative model and watermark schemes. In this paper, we uncover a greater risk of an optimization-free and universal watermark forgery that harnesses existing regenerative diffusion models. Our proposed forgery attack, PnP (Plug-and-Plant), seamlessly extracts and integrates the target watermark via regenerating the image, without needing any additional optimization routine. It allows for universal watermark forgery that works independently of the target image's origin or the watermarking model used. We explore the watermarked latent extracted from the target image and visual-textual context of cover images as priors to guide sampling of the regenerative process. Extensive evaluation on 24 scenarios of model-data-watermark combinations demonstrates that PnP can successfully forge the watermark (up to 100% detectability and user attribution), and maintain the best visual perception. By bypassing model retraining and enabling adaptability to any image, our approach significantly broadens the scope of forgery attacks, presenting a greater challenge to the security of current watermarking techniques for diffusion models and the authority of watermarking schemes in synthetic data generation and governance.
title Optimization-Free Universal Watermark Forgery with Regenerative Diffusion Models
topic Multimedia
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06018