Image authentication based on digital signature and semi-fragile watermarking

This paper proposes an authentication scheme for JPEG images based on digital signature and semi-fragile watermarking. It can detect and locate malicious manipulations made to the image, and verify the owenership of the image at the same time. The algorithm uses the invariance of the order relationship between two DCT coefficients before and after JPEG compression to embed image content depedent watermark, therefore the watermark can survive the JPEG lossy compression. Since the scheme is based on the security of the cryptographic hash function and public key algorithm, it is believed to be secure to the extent that cryptography is believed to be. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed scheme has the desired property and good performance for image authentication.