MarkAny

South Korean IT company

MarkAny Inc.Industry| IT Security

|

Founded| February 1999 in Seoul
Headquarters|

Seoul

South Korea

Products| Computer security solutions for document security, mobile security, electronic document anti-forgery, CCTV video footage, and multimedia content

Number of employees

| 160
Website| www.markany.com/eng/

MarkAny Inc. (Korean: 마크애니) is an information security company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. MarkAny holds technologies including DRM, anti-forgery of electronic document, digital signature, and digital watermarking. Based on the technologies, MarkAny offers information security products for data protection, document encryption, electronic certification, and copyright protection.[1]

## History

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MarkAny has founded in February 1999 by Professor Choi Jong-uk and his graduate students at Sangmyung University.[2] In 2002, MarkAny provided anti-forgery and physical copy protection solution for electronic certificate issuing system of Gangnam-gu Office,[3] and in 2003, for National Tax Service of South Korea[4] and Supreme Court of South Korea.[5] Later MarkAny supplied its anti-forgery solution for more than 200 companies and government agencies worldwide.[6] MarkAny started business on information security of digital CCTV footage data in 2013 by providing video data management system for CCTV control center of Tongyeong City Government.[7] In 2014, MarkAny provided its audio watermarking solution to Seoul Broadcasting System, a South Korean television station.[8] From 2017, MarkAny has been a member of Ultra HD Forum and enrolled as a supporter of the creation of forensic watermarking guideline with other watermarking vendor companies.[9] In 2017 NAB Show, MarkAny have practiced real-time embedding of forensic watermark over UHD video stream.[10] In late 2017, MarkAny announced its first cloud-based DRM solution.[11]

Products provided by the company include DRM for documents and multimedia content, mobile device management, and digital watermarking for copyrighted multimedia.

## Controversy

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MarkAny's digital watermarking technology has been controversial and issues have been raised due to its intrusive ability to monitor and modify media files, unbeknownst to the end user, by enveloping itself as part of a software's bundle. This "watermarking" feature stores a personally identifiable tracking ID, within obscure extension subtags permitted in these formats with features having discovered to "home-call" back to servers in the background. Active attempts to conceal their DRM from normal OS I/O operations, while appearing free of any alteration without the notifying the user or seeking user permission, has led to advisories on its rootkit and malware characteristics.[12]

## Affiliations

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As of January 2018, MarkAny is a member company of Digital Watermarking Alliance[13] and a contributor member of Ultra HD Forum.[14]

## References

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1. ^ "Here Come the K-books: Digital Publishing in Korea 2014". Publishers Weekly. 2014-05-21.
2. ^ [전자상거래] 대상 / 마크애니 [[e-Commerce] Grand Prize Winner: MarkAny]. Maeil Business News (in Korean). 2001-10-17.
3. ^ 마크애니,강남구청 솔루션 공급 [MarkAny supply solution to Gangnam-gu Office]. The Korea Economic Daily (in Korean). 2002-02-05.
4. ^ 마크애니, 국세청 위변조 방지시스템 수주 [MarkAny is to build anti-forgery system for National Tax Service]. iNews24 (in Korean). 2003-12-15.
5. ^ 대법원, 내년 3월부터 등기부등본 인터넷 발급 서비스 [Supreme Court will start issuing registration certificates via Internet from March next year]. iNews24 (in Korean). 2003-11-05.
6. ^ 개인정보보호 주요이슈 따라잡기 ⑥전자문서 위·변조 방지 [Major issues in personal information security at-a-glance: (6) Electronic document anti-forgery]. Security News Korea 보안뉴스 (in Korean). 2012-05-08.
7. ^ CCTV 늘면서 사생활 침해 막는 솔루션도 '인기' [Privacy protection solution becomes popular with spreading CCTVs]. iNews24 (in Korean). 2016-08-02.
8. ^ 마크애니, SBS에 오디오 워터마킹 솔루션 ‘MAO’공급 [Markany will provide audio watermarking solution "MAO" to SBS]. IT Daily (South Korea) (in Korean). 2014-12-23.
9. ^ "UHD Forum adds forensic watermarking guidelines". Broadband TV News. 2017-04-23.
10. ^ 마크애니, UHD 워터마킹 기술 미국에 선봬 [Markany presented its UHD watermarking technology in US]. Digital Daily (South Korea) (in Korean). 2017-04-26.
11. ^ 마크애니, 클라우드 기반 문서보안 솔루션 선봬 [MarkAny introduced cloud-based document security solution]. ZDNet Korea (in Korean). 2017-11-27.
12. ^ "Samsung and Keyloggers". xda-developers.com. 2020-12-09.
13. ^ "Members - Digital Watermarking Alliance". Retrieved 2018-01-16.
14. ^ "Members - Ultra HD Forum". Retrieved 2018-01-16.

## External links

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* Official website