methodsfordetectingchangesindigitalimages.docVIP

METHODS FOR DETECTING CHANGES IN DIGITAL IMAGES Jiri Fridrich Center for Intelligent Systems, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 Ph/Fx: (607) 777-2577 fridrich@binghamton.edu Mission Research Corporation, 1720 Randolph Rd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87501 ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to design a watermarking scheme capable of distinguishing visible but non-malicious changes due to common image processing operations from malicious changes, such as feature adding/replacement. We start with an overview of watermarking techniques for detection of tampering in digital images and discuss their limitations. A new technique that inserts robust watermarks into small disjoint blocks is proposed. The technique can be implemented with small memory and computational requirements, which makes it potentially useful for hardware implementation in digital cameras. This paper further extends our previous effort [1]. 1. INTRODUCTION Powerful publicly available image processing software packages such as Adobe PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro make digital forgeries a reality. Feathered cropping enables replacing or adding features without causing detectable edges. It is also possible to carefully cut out portions of several images and combine them together while leaving barely detectable traces. Techniques such as careful analysis of the noise component of different image segments, comparing histograms of disjoint image blocks, or searching for discontinuities could probably reveal some cases of tampering, but a capable attacker with enough expertise can always avoid such traps and come up with an almost perfect forgery given enough time and resources. This is one of the reasons why digital imagery is not acceptable as evidence in establishing the chain of custody in the court of law. There are other instances, of mostly military character where image integrity is of paramount importance. Digital images typically contain a lot of redundant information due to large spatial