Questionnaire iMARS
iMARS (image Manipulation Attack Resolving Solutions) is a research project funded by the European Commission’s H2020 programme, started in September 2020 for 48 months. The use of counterfeit travel documents at borders is a reality, which entails the risk of not identifying known criminals, including terrorists, or previously unknown subjects such as victims of human trafficking. Document fraud is one of the engines of organized crime in the European Union: although document fraud does not have a direct impact on most citizens in the European Union, it facilitates other serious and organized crimes. It also has a strong impact on States since the financial consequences may be significant.
See for more information Homepage — iMARS (imars-project.eu)
What is Morphing and image manipulation?
Morphing is the process of creating a new face image by digitally merging the facial representations of two or more different images. There are a number of different morphing techniques, from automatic morphing using apps and software, to manual morphing using photo editing softwares like Photoshop. Beyond morphing there are manipulation attacks that intentionally alter digitally the visual appearance or specific property’s of an image resulting in misrepresentation or misinterpretation.
The focus of iMARS is to detect and prevent morphing or other types of image manipulation in the enrolment and application process.
Results
iMARS develops solutions to better detect document fraud and image manipulation forgeries, in the ID document life cycle – from issuance to verification – and forensic investigation, that are:
- Efficient and fast for operators and travelers.
- Simple, low-cost, compatible with existing systems and user-friendly.
Those technical solutions include:
- State-of-the-art image manipulation and Morphing Attack Detection solutions
- Document Verification and Fraud Detection solutions.
Morphing Attack Detection, Document Verification and Fraud Detection software will be integrated in both Automated Border Control gates and in the back end of enrolment systems to ensure more secure verification of identities. Non-technical solutions include strategies to defend the authenticity of alphanumeric and photo data, confirm data integrity and detect image manipulations. Combined, these solutions will support human experts in their decision making in an assisted manner.
Questionnaire
On behalf of the project we want to explore how many and which kind of morphing attacks or other types of image manipulations have been discovered in the past 5 years by States.