The Role of Information Security in Digital Quran Multimedia Content

Dr. Omar Tayan

IT Research Center for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (NOOR), andDepartment of Computer Engineering,

College of Computer Science and Engineering,Taibah University, Saudi Arabia.

AbstractAs storage, propagation and access of multimedia content on the Internet continues to grow at exponential rates, this paper discusses the need and importance of digital multimedia security for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences that is propagated on the World Wide Web (WWW) and accessed through modern user-devices, including; personal-computers, laptops/notepads, smart-phones, portable digital assistants (PDAs), electronic-tablets and other handheld electronic devices. During this information age, the world has witnessed numerous attempts to propagate false text and text-images claiming to be from the Holy Quran. Such modifications to the propagated Quran data may be intentional or unintentional. Therefore, the significance of research in the domain of Information Security for the Holy Quran is emphasized as a topic of utmost importance in order to prevent invalid distributions of the Holy Quran propagated using digital media. The societal-impacts and trends/implications in the digital world of Quranic applications are then discussed. Thereafter, key highlights presented of the efforts underway within the Unit of Information Security for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences at the "IT Research Center for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (NOOR)" based in Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah. Finally, the talk shall also outline other ongoing activities and visions within the NOOR Research Center. Keywords: digital-Quran; watermarking; integrity; authentication; multimedia.

المتعددة الوسائط مجال في المعلومات أمن دورالكريم للقرآن الرقمية

عمر. طيان د

( وعلومه الكريم القرآن لخدمة المعلومات تقنية أبحاث مركز وقسم) هندسة نور كلية, السعودية العربية المملكة, طيبة جامعة, الحاسب وهندسة علوم الحاسب .

الملخص محتوى إلى والنفاذ والنشر التخزين معدالت في الهائل النمو ضوء في

سنناقش, شبكة على المتعددة الوسائط والحاجة الضرورة بدايًة اإلنترنت عبر المنتشرة وعلومه الكريم للقرآن المتعددة الوسائط معلومات أمن إلى

األلواح/ اآللي الحاسب أجهزة و اإلنترنت شبكة الهواتف, المحمولة الرقميةأجهزة, حيث. اإللكترونيات من وغيرها PDA الذكية هذه خالل من المحمولة

من كاذبة أو مغلوطة نصوص لنشر عديدة محاوالت شهدنا التكنولوجياقد, القرآن هنا. غير أو مقصودة المغالطات هذه تكون الكريم تظهر مقصودة في كموضوع الكريم القرآن لخدمة المعلومات أمن مجال في األبحاث أهمية شكلها في الكريم للقرآن الخاطئة النصوص نشر من للحد وذلك األهمية غاية

وسوف. الرقمي القرآن مجال في األبحاث تأثيرهذه نظهر الرقميبعد. والتطبيقات الجهود توضح التي أبرزالنقاط سنعرض ذلك اإلسالمية

وعلومه الكريم القرآن لخدمة المعلومات أمن وحدة في المبذولة البحثية( وعلومه الكريم القرآن لخدمة المعلومات تقنية أبحاث مركز في مقره) نوروفي. المدينة في والرؤية األخرى للنشاطات نتطرق سوف نهاية المنورة

نور. أبحاث مركز في بها المعمول

1. Introduction

The Information Age has witnessed an ever increasing dependence on the Internet and world-wide web (WWW) in our lives and daily activities. Furthermore, the continuing growth of such information and communication technologies play a crucial role in establishing the Internet and WWW as the dominant IT platform for digital content distribution, communication, redistribution and other general information sharing activities. Millions of worldwide users are then able to benefit from the advantages of fast and simple mechanisms for digital information exchange. On the contrary, such benefits are also vulnerable to the problems and threats associated with securing the digital content. The literature of digital multimedia content has identified a number of security issues to be addressed that include: digital copyright protection, preventing digital-counterfeiting proof-of-content-authenticity and content-originality verification. Clearly, such requirements are more predominant in the case of specialized and religious content, such as in the case of the Holy Quran digital content. Generally, all digital multimedia content on the Internet can be classified into text, images, audio and video with the challenge being to provide secure, robust and reliable storage and dissemination for each media type. This paper explains the important and timely role of information assurance and related security techniques concerned with the storage, propagation, reproduction and communication of online Quran multimedia content. 2. Background

2.1 Essentials in Information Assurance/Security

Some of the key objectives of digital multimedia security can be classified into; requirements for assuring authenticity and integrity of content, usage-control, binding of identification data with the cover-content, and ensuring secrecy and non-repudiation in the transmitted content. These requirements are examined in more detail in the next section.

2.2 Techniques used in Information Security

The state-of-the-art techniques in information security can be used to achieve the necessary security requirements according to the target application and content-type. Table 1 highlights some common state-of-the-art techniques and the specified goal/target of each technique. Among the five requirements identified in Section 2.1, the protection of digital Quran multimedia content is mainly achieved using authenticity and integrity techniques (Table 1) so as to ensure that 100% accurate Quran content is transmitted and stored at any time and any location on the Internet.

Integrity is concerned with ensuring that the transmitted data is not altered or tampered with, and is similar to the version sent. Integrity can be achieved using numerous techniques such as; encryption, hashing, watermarking etc. Authentication, on the other hand, is associated with establishing trust between communicating parties, such as assurance by verifying that resources had originated from a trusted source/publisher. Authentication can be achieved using digital signatures/certificates and digital-watermarking. In contrast, the confidentiality and non-repudiation concerns are less important for the purpose of Quran dissemination, since we are only concerned with propagating accurate/correct content as opposed to whether the content can be accessed by other third-parties during online transmission.

Table 1: Classification of Challenges and Techniques in Information Security

Technique Goal/Objective Application

Encryption Systems Confidentiality and Integrity Symmetric-Key systemsAsymmetric/Public-key systems

Watermarking, Digital Certificates Authentication and Integrity

Adds signature of source in dataUsed for tracing and copyright

protection

Steganography Authentication and Integrity Purely data-hiding purposesHigh-capacity embeddings

Fingerprinting, Message Digests, Hash Functions Authentication and Integrity Used in secure hash-algorithms,

one-way hashing.

Protocols Confidentiality and IntegrityProvides a known

communication mechanism between 2+ parties

Hybrid Systems Confidentiality and IntegrityCombines between symmetric and asymmetric key systemsSession-key can be applied.

3. Significance of Security in Quran Multimedia

An important concern for Muslims and humanity at-large is to ensure that information technologies are used in a decent and reasonable manner when applied in the service of the Holy Quran. As such it is crucial that such technologies are not abused as in the case of attacking the Holy Quran or by propagating false versions of the Holy Quran. Ultimately, Allah has promised in the Quran:

Verily, We, it is We who have sent down the Dhikr (i.e. the Quran) and surely, We will guard it (from corruption).

Translation from the King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing ComplexHence, an essential requirement motivating this work is to raise awareness into this sensitive issue and to exert and motivate efforts to enforce necessary protection measures ensuring that modern IT technologies are only used for propagation of correct and original digital Quran content and that such technologies are not used to

attack the Holy Quran. A further motive is to ensure that any deliberate/non-deliberate modifications to the Quran do not go undetected and that necessary corrective actions are taken in such cases.

3.1 Examples of Security Issues Associated with Digital Quran Multimedia Applications

An Internet search of IT-applications that are used in the service of the Holy Quran has revealed a number of surprising results. Most notably, several applications were found to propagate missing or incorrect verses of the Holy Quran. For instance, Figure 1 shows a mobile-application with an incorrect verse being displayed in Chapter Al-Imran.

Figure 1: Example of an incorrect verse displayed in a mobile application

Figure 2(a) on the other hand, shows another smart-phone application with a missing verse observed when comparing with Figure 2(b) and 2(c). It is considerable that thousands of users may have downloaded and read such incorrect versions of the digital Quran readily available from the online i-store or Google-apps/play-store.

(a) (b) (c)Figure 2: Example of a missing verse displayed in another mobile application

Figure 3 shows another example of a false-script, readily available for sale online at the online Amazon store.

Figure 3: False scripture readily available for online sale at Amazon.com

Therefore, a concern of utmost importance to Muslims is that necessary precautions and actions are taken to detect and counter such false propagations of the Holy Quran, whether the third-party modifications are deliberate or non-deliberate. This is essential to ensure that the worldwide community of online users is only provided with correct and 100% accurate Quran content at all times.

4. Challenges in Digital Quran Propagation

4.1 Sensitivities in the Holy Quran

The scientific community in the domain of information-security for the Holy Quran are faced with a number of technical challenges in the goal of intact-integrity and authentic Quran dissemination. Some of the main challenges that must be considered due to the sensitive nature of the Holy Quran can now be summarized into the following classifications:

IT based solutions must accommodate the sensitivities of the Holy Quran. any modification to the Quranic-text (fundamental characters, Tajweed

symbols or diacritics) shall result with an invalid copy of the Quran. automated checking and verification procedures are required for printed and

online Quranic publications.

4.2 Digitization of the Holy Quran

Essentially, all types of Quran content (e.g. text, images, audio) that must be represented, stored and transmitted in electronic format must pass through a number of information-assurance procedures/algorithms to ensure data-integrity, robustness and security of the electronic Quran content as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Information Assurance procedures applied to Quran multimedia before propagated online

A number of research trends have emerged when dealing with information assurance techniques for various multimedia types as found in online multimedia Quran content. Some of the research trends concerned with mechanisms for increased protection are notable in the following media types:

Text: the most predominant form of online media. Images: used in mobile/smart-phone applications and some websites. Audio/Videos: used in online teaching and remote recitation to a Quran scholar.

4.3 Content Protection for the Holy Quran: Analysis of Sensitivity Requirements and Possible Solutions Some of the main challenges concerned with the protection of multimedia Quran content is highlighted in Table 2. Digital watermarking is also presented as an effective technique for enforcing integrity and verifying authenticity of online Quran content.

Table 2: Summary of the problem classification, requirements and recommended solution for digital/online Quran content

Stage Requirements Comments/Recommended Solution

1 Digital Information Exchange Benefits to millions of users.Associated problems/threats.

2 Digital Content Protection Counterfeiting, proof-of-authentication, content-originality challenges.

3 Security Requirement/Sensitivity of Digital Quran Integrity needed. Secure from tampering. Uses known reference body.

4 Digital Watermarking Effective security for the Holy Quran Content.

5. Highlights of Information-Security Research and Other Activities at NOOR

5.1 Description of Ongoing Project: Information-Security for the Holy Quran

This section describes a major research project within the Unit of Information Security for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (NOOR), funded by the Ministry of Higher Education. The project team consists of team-members mainly from Taibah University (NOOR Research Center) and Qassim University. Figure 5 highlights the project's target goals, milestones and deliverables, in addition to how the project has contributed to some of the center's main goals.

Figure 5: Targeted goals, milestones and deliverables of ongoing major project in Information Security for the Holy Quran

Significantly, this project work has contributed to a number of major benefits to the society including; providing users with online/electronic publications of authentic and a correct-version of the digital-Quran, and, ensuring that users can rely on the

integrity of the digital Quran and be re-assured that the original source of the digital Quran content is a known and authentic publication body. The broad-scope and user-base from within the society that are expected to benefit from authentic, robust and integrity-intact digital Quran content as a result of employing information-assurance techniques include:

Reference Organizations Scholars of the Holy Quran Students Learning the Quran Virtual Classroom Environments

5.1.1 Techniques for Protection of the Holy Quran Digital Content

Approaches for Digital Text-Protection

A number of techniques can be found in the literature for the protection of digital text content such as the Holy Quran. Those techniques include: digital-watermarking, public-key cryptography, digital-signatures and hash-functions/digital-digests. Two approaches particularly suitable for protection of Quran-text content were found to be the use of hash-functions/digital-digests and digital-watermarking approaches. With digital-digests, the text-content is divided into blocks, each of which is passed into a function to generate a short digest-code. This computed digest-code is transmitted with the original message-block. The receiver then applies the same function on the original-block. A comparison between the transmitted block digest-code and the digest computed at the receiver-end reveals the validity of the received text-block. For the hashing approach to operate as required, several conditions are imposed on the algorithm (e.g. one-way and collision-free digests generated) and the function-algorithm should be known at both sides of the communication. In digital-watermarking schemes, a signature (e.g. a logo or binary-string) representing the sender/publisher or data-owner is commonly embedded into the host data with the embedded signal being produced as a function of both the host-data and watermark signal. The embedded-signal is then transmitted or published online. A decoder-function would then be employed to extract the embedded watermark and prove the original data owner/publisher. In practice, the transmitted watermarked-signal may incur various signal processing operations (e.g. resulting with data-corruption) or attack scenarios during or before transmission, and hence, the watermark is required to remain robust in face of such operations to ensure that the watermark can be extracted (or at least partially extracted) to verify data ownership when needed. This section discusses the use of digital-text watermarking techniques due to the many benefits of this approach compared to many other existing approaches that include: avoiding the requirement of knowing shared secrets in advance between communication parties, reducing complexity where possible, and avoiding key-management and distribution overheads. Moreover, watermarking techniques were examined in this paper for effective enforcement and protection measures for digital multimedia Quran content. Figure 6 shows the common stages in the watermarking lifecycle regardless of the underlying media-type [4, 7-9]. The stages are broadly classified into watermark encoding at the publisher/server-side, and watermark decoding at the end-user/client-side. Advantageously, digital-watermarks can also be designed to detect and/or localize unauthorized modifications to the content. Readers

interested in the details of the various other approaches are referred to the relevant literature [1-6].

Figure 6: Phases in the Watermarking Lifecycle [7]

Text-based watermarking can be broadly classified into format/appearance coding and linguistic coding [10]. The former includes techniques such as syntactic, semantic and natural-language processing (NLP), whilst the latter includes language-specific symbols coding, character-position codes, line-shifting, word-shifting, space-based, diacritics-based, and Kashida-based watermarking among other schemes. Figure 7 identifies some of the more common techniques in the literature that are used for watermark-encoding in electronic text documents, whilst Figure 8 shows the overlap between text-based watermarking and steganographic performance metrics.

Figure 7: Classification of Text-Based Watermarking Techniques

Figure 8: Comparison of Performance Metrics for Two Techniques [7]

In order to be able to store and process the textual-data, coding schemes such as UNICODE or ASCII are required to represent the data numerically. Moreover, watermarking techniques are commonly evaluated in terms of capacity, imperceptibility and robustness performance metrics [7, 9, 11-12]. Notably, only very few works exist today on the use and adoption of watermarking techniques for the characteristics of the Arabic language. Furthermore, virtually no works were found on the use of those approaches for the specific and sensitive characteristics of the Quran-text. Among the listed approaches, a number of works have investigated diacritics-based [36] and Kashida-based watermarking schemes for the Arabic-language [7, 13-16]. Additionally, a detailed comparison between the space-based, diacritics-based and Kashida-based schemes for the Arabic-language is presented in [9, 17-18]. Other works include algorithms that had applied searching and matching techniques on the Quran-text to separately verify the fundamental text followed by the diacritic and Tajweed symbols to determine the published text embedded within websites [8, 19].

More recently, the concept of zero-watermarking has emerged in the literature [9, 20-30], in which no physical embedding is performed on the data. Such schemes offer a solution for highly-sensitive text-content in which any data modification (as in many other approaches) would render the published text as invalid. Essentially, the zero-watermarking schemes compute signature-like codes during the encoding phase based on the characteristics of the host data without physically modifying the original text. In several such schemes the decoder would check for similar codes at the client-side document to verify integrity of the data received. Such zero-watermarking schemes are largely related and comparable to digital-signature schemes in which a signature-code is computed whilst no embedding is performed on the actual data. Significantly, the use of various zero-watermarking-type approaches was since successfully applied to the Quran-text content in [12, 31]. An example of one such zero-watermarking encoder/decoder design implemented recently is shown in Figure 9 [12]. Computational-time comparisons of several such approaches in terms of encoding and decoding-times are presented in the literature [9, 12]. Other watermarking approaches which were considered largely inappropriate for the sensitivities of the Arabic language and the Holy Quran in particular, can be found in [3, 18, 22, 27, 32-33]. Those studies [3, 18, 22, 27, 32-33] include the use of various watermarking approaches on different languages with different characteristics and properties as compared with Arabic and Quranic-text. Furthermore, more general watermarking surveys and reviews can be found in the literature [10, 34-35, 37].

Figure 9: Overview of (a) Encoding Process, (b) Decoding Process (from [12]),

Figure 10 illustrates the web-based text-watermarking authentication and integrity-verification system developed as part of the project outcomes. It is shown that encoder and decoder execution times are displayed (Figure 10) as well as the result of the 'authenticity' test at the decoder/client-end for some given input sample.

(a)

(b)

Figure 10: (a) Interface of Developed Web-Based Encoder Application, and, (b) Interface of the Developed Web-Based Decoder Application

Figure 11 illustrates the developed framework and system for Digital-Quran Authentication and Integrity-Verification using an automated Browser Plug-In with Integrated Quran Verse Search capability in Embedded Web-Pages/ Web-Documents. The applications are built as complete systems and are customizable for tailored specification by any Holy-Quran publisher/reference-body and are easily deployable onto a publisher's server for immediate activation.

(a)

(b)

Figure 11: Interface of the Developed Automated Quran Integrity and Authenticity Checking System: (a) Displayed text completely verified, and, (b) Displayed text with partial errors.

Approaches for Digital Image-Protection

In the literature of digital-image protection, image-watermarking has been identified as a well established concept for copyright protection, online content-legitimacy and image-authenticity verification of general artistic pictures/images that are typically comprised of detailed and highly graphical images, including photographs with many textures and colors [38-42]. With such images, a potentially large search-space exists in the data in which the watermark embedding could be achieved. This work considers the use of digital-image watermarking for sensitive textual-images in which no visible modifications of the Quran-image content is permissible. The target in this work is to ensure integrity-protection and provide source-authenticity verification for digital-publications of the Holy Quran content, given the characteristic of the sensitive content which is intolerable to even the slightest modifications by any third-party (whether deliberate or non-deliberate). Hence, our work aims to provide a means to ensure that such content from a known publisher is secure from being tampered without detection [11].

The study of digital-watermarking techniques for sensitive text-images is absolutely minimal in the related literature and hence needs to be investigated further. The particular challenge here is that Quranic-images typically involve a clear and defined structure with minimum use of colors and textures, which therefore minimizes the potential search-space in which the embedding can be performed. This is due to the clear foreground (e.g. black or other uni-colored text) and background (e.g. a white or other uni-colored pages) used which presents a limitation in the available pixels in which the watermark-bits can be inserted. Figure 12 illustrates and example of a Quran-image and a watermark to be embedded into the host-image. In comparison to graphical/artistic images, Quran text-images typically only use a few colors and textures with a clear background and foreground structure (as in Figure 12).

Figure 12: The Original Content and Watermark images used during experimentation (Quran sample, 2013; NOOR, 2013 - images adopted from [43-44]).

Image-watermarking techniques can be classified into spatial-domain and frequency-domain techniques [34-35]. Spatial-techniques operate on the individual pixels, normally applying some spread-based approach, whilst the frequency-domain techniques operate on different/various frequency representations of the signal. The least significant bit (LSB) approach is a well-known example of a spatial-domain embedding technique. On the other hand, frequency-domain approaches include: Fast-

Original image Watermark Logo

Fourier transform (FFT), discrete-wavelet transform (DWT), discrete-cosine transform (DCT), singular-value decomposition (SVD) and a hybrid of those approaches. For a review of spatial and transform-based techniques, the reader is referred to [34-35]. Furthermore, watermarking can be applied to a host-image using different configuration-settings, including: visible-watermarking, semi-visible watermarking and invisible-watermarking. Figure 13 illustrates results of the SVD approach using visible, semi-visible and invisible watermarking. Figure 13 shows some sample results when applied on Holy Quran text-images (from [11]) for the various watermarking scenarios when varying some implementation-parameters. In the case of sensitive Quran-image content, the only valid approach for the end-user would be to obtain the version that is perceptually exactly similar to the original image, suggesting that only invisible-watermarking can be applied for Quranic-images (as in Figure 13(c)).

(a) Extracted Watermark using (a) visible-watermarking

(b) Extracted Watermark using (b) semi-visible watermarking

(c) Extracted Watermark using (c) invisible-watermarking

Figure 13: Digital-Watermarking for Quran images (from [11]) using different watermarking scenarios

In Figure 13, the first row in each case represents the watermarked-image (e.g. the result of embedding the logo in the Quran-image), while the second row represents third-party modifications to the image (several attack scenarios are illustrated in each case), which may be intentional or unintentional modifications, but nevertheless, result with an invalid/fake copy being published. Finally, the third row in Figure 13 (a-c) represents the difference between the extracted watermark at the receiver-side and the original watermark. Ideally, a robust watermarking algorithm should be able to extract the watermark from the host data exactly similar to the embedded watermark at the sender-side. The results shown in Figure 13 (c) illustrates that when using our approach configured with invisible-watermarking, the watermark can be successfully extracted even under dangerous third-party attack-scenarios; which include JPEG, median-filtering, additive-noise, PSNR, and rotational attacks. The results demonstrate the robustness of our approach under such attack-scenarios [11]. Significantly, this scheme can be used to verify the authenticity and originality of the Quran image-content, since extraction of the watermark identifies the original source/publisher.

Figures 14 and 15 illustrate the web-based image-watermarking authentication and integrity-verification system developed as part of the project outcomes. Figure 14 illustrates the server-side interface, while Figure 15 illustrates the client-interface. In Figure 15, two beta-prototype versions are displayed showing the affect of possible attacks on the image received at the client-end. In each display (from Figure 15), the algorithm was able to successfully extract the watermark, which proves source-traceability back to the original publisher.

Figure 14: Interface of the Developed Image-Watermarking Quran Integrity and Authenticity Checking System: server-end display showing the watermarked-image and a sample of an

attacked image

Figure 15: Interface of the Image-Watermarking Quran Integrity and Authenticity Checking System: client-end display showing the watermarked-image and a sample of the received (e.g.

after attack) image with watermark extraction, and a display of the effect of modifications made on the extracted watermark.

Audio-Based Watermarking Techniques

Many audio-based watermarking techniques found in the literature can be broadly classified as in Figure 16. Figure 17 presents the main parameters and research issues in audio-watermarking techniques for the Holy Quran.

Figure 16: Classification of potential Audio-Speech Watermarking Techniques for the Holy Quran

Figure 17: Issues of key importance in Audio-Watermarking for the Holy Quran

In short, audio-watermarking techniques for the Holy Quran are required to operate without modifying the audible signal (e.g. the Quran recitation), which would otherwise result a modification in the actual recitation and hence cause an invalid audio-signal to be transmitted. Optimal techniques for audio-watermarking are currently under development and shall be reported in consequent publications.

5.2 Outline of Work-Phases in Unit of Information Security

Figure 18 highlights the main phases involved in the ongoing project which can be identified in terms of challenges in text, image and audio-video multimedia content.

Figure 18: Project challenges encompass various multimedia formats of the Holy Quran

It is anticipated that a number of products could emerge for the benefit of the society as a result of this work. The remainder of this section provides an insight into each phase (from Figure 18).

5.3 Project Achievements, Outcomes and Deliverables

Table 3 summarizes some of the main project achievements to-date for each phase introduced in Figure 18.

Table 3: Summary of Project Achievements

Phase Description Summary of Results

I Text-Based Watermarking System

Completed designs for different text-watermarking approaches for sensitive text documents such as the Holy Quran. Implementations for encoder and decoder systems were developed, completed, tested and documented.

II Image-Based Watermarking System

Completed designs for two text-image based watermarking approaches for the Holy Quran. Implementations for the encoder and decoder system was developed, completed, tested and documented.

III Audio-Based Watermarking System

Complete analysis and classification of the state-of-the-art from the literature, including identification of our parameters, system analysis.

IV Overall Authentic e-Quran Propagation

Integration of various project components to follow

The target end-product following the completion of Phase IV is to develop a state-of-the-art security system for digital Quran e-content in order to ensure the authentication and integrity protection of disseminated and published electronic Quran content in all media formats.

5.4 Other Activities at the NOOR Research Center

Figure 19 highlights the main operational pillars within the IT Research Center for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (NOOR) at Taibah University. Essentially, the goal is to create a nucleus for the establishment of a future research center of excellence in the area of IT applications for the service of the Holy Quran and its Sciences.

Figure 19: NOOR Research Center Operational Strategy

6. Conclusions and Future Work

The rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web suggests that more attention is required for the security and protection of online multimedia Quran content. There is an essence and need for Information Assurance/Security in the digital community. Numerous attempts have been shown to target tampering and false publication of digital Quranic resources online. Therefore, digital Quran resources for all multimedia types require information security and mechanisms for protection using integrity verification and authentication. Digital watermarking techniques present a very promising solution for ensuring integrity and authenticity of the Quran content. This paper has presented the need to address security issues concerning digital online Quran propagation. The Unit of Information Security for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences at NOOR Research Center are exerting efforts in this domain.

Future work in this domain include; conducting research and studies on the use of information technologies for identifying distinct approaches and for the discovery of typographical errors, and to strive to enable the NOOR Center or King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex to become a credible certification authority (e.g. an accreditation authority for all online Quran multimedia), which involves issuing digital-certificates of adherence to specifications and standards for those online users who request content-verification and certification.

7. Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank and acknowledge the IT Research Center for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (NOOR) at Taibah University for their financial support for the project work under research grant reference number NRC1-126. Thanks are also made to the team members: Dr. Muhammad Kabir, Dr. Yasser Alginahi, Dr. Lamri Laouamer, and Tarek Moulahi who contributed to the success of the project work reported here in part.

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