Tamper-proof image watermarking, based on existing public key infrastructure

Abstract

The paper describes methods for generating image watermark for asymmetric key based watermark embedding and detection scheme in wavelet domain. The proposed method combines DWT-based watermarking and the ability to verify watermark using reliable methods of asymmetric coding. The watermark scheme is developed to be directly incorporated into JPEG2000 image coding standard, while it can be used in existing image coding standards. In presented watermarking method the application of public key infrastructure is emphasized. We use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) public key management scheme as the element for verification of sender's identity and also place of storing and retrieval of watermark detection keys. The most public key watermarking schemes use new, independent and cryptologically unverified keys. The reuse existing key verification and exchange infrastructure provides us cryptologically strong and verified keys. © 2005 Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius.