Collusion-Secure Fingerprinting for Digital Data

Collusion-Secure Fingerprinting for Digital Data

Boneh, Dan, and James Shaw
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 44, no. 5 (1998): 1897-1905
https://doi.org/10.1109/18.705568

“Fingerprinting is an old cryptographic technique. Several hundred years ago logarithm tables were protected by fingerprinting them. The idea was to introduce tiny errors in the insignificant digits (i.e., tenth digit right of the decimal point) of log x for a few random values of x. A different set of x’s was chosen for each copy of the logarithm table. If an owner of a logarithm table ever sold illegal copies of it, the tiny errors in the table enabled the “police” to trace an illegal copy back to its owner. The owner would then be prosecuted and penalized in some way. ”

— Boneh & Shaw