SemBind: Binding Diffusion Watermarks to Semantics Against Black-Box Forgery Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Xin, Yang, Zijin, Chen, Kejiang, Ma, Linfeng, Zhang, Weiming, Yu, Nenghai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Xin
Yang, Zijin
Chen, Kejiang
Ma, Linfeng
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
author_facet Zhang, Xin
Yang, Zijin
Chen, Kejiang
Ma, Linfeng
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
contents Latent-based watermarks, integrated into the generation process of latent diffusion models (LDMs), simplify detection and attribution of generated images. However, recent black-box forgery attacks, where an attacker needs at least one watermarked image and black-box access to the provider's model, can embed the provider's watermark into images not produced by the provider, posing outsized risk to provenance and trust. We propose SemBind, the first defense framework for latent-based watermarks that resists black-box forgery by binding latent signals to image semantics via a learned semantic masker. Trained with contrastive learning, the masker yields near-invariant codes for the same prompt and near-orthogonal codes across prompts; these codes are reshaped and permuted to modulate the target latent before any standard latent-based watermark. SemBind is generally compatible with existing latent-based watermarking schemes and keeps image quality essentially unchanged, while a simple mask-ratio parameter offers a tunable trade-off between anti-forgery strength and robustness. Across four mainstream latent-based watermark methods, our SemBind-enabled anti-forgery variants markedly reduce false acceptance under black-box forgery while providing a controllable robustness-security balance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_20310
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SemBind: Binding Diffusion Watermarks to Semantics Against Black-Box Forgery Attacks
Zhang, Xin
Yang, Zijin
Chen, Kejiang
Ma, Linfeng
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Cryptography and Security
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Latent-based watermarks, integrated into the generation process of latent diffusion models (LDMs), simplify detection and attribution of generated images. However, recent black-box forgery attacks, where an attacker needs at least one watermarked image and black-box access to the provider's model, can embed the provider's watermark into images not produced by the provider, posing outsized risk to provenance and trust. We propose SemBind, the first defense framework for latent-based watermarks that resists black-box forgery by binding latent signals to image semantics via a learned semantic masker. Trained with contrastive learning, the masker yields near-invariant codes for the same prompt and near-orthogonal codes across prompts; these codes are reshaped and permuted to modulate the target latent before any standard latent-based watermark. SemBind is generally compatible with existing latent-based watermarking schemes and keeps image quality essentially unchanged, while a simple mask-ratio parameter offers a tunable trade-off between anti-forgery strength and robustness. Across four mainstream latent-based watermark methods, our SemBind-enabled anti-forgery variants markedly reduce false acceptance under black-box forgery while providing a controllable robustness-security balance.
title SemBind: Binding Diffusion Watermarks to Semantics Against Black-Box Forgery Attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20310