A flexible and scalable authentication scheme for JPEG2000 image codestreams

JPEG2000 is an emerging standard for still image compression and is becoming the solution of choice for many digital imaging fields and applications. An important aspect of JPEG2000 is its "compress once, decompress many ways" property [1], i. e., it allows extraction of various sub-images (e.g., images with various resolutions, pixel fidelities, tiles and components) all from a single compressed image codestream. In this paper, we present a flexible and scalable authentication scheme for JPEG2000 images based on the Merkle hash tree and digital signature. Our scheme is fully compatible with JPEG2000 and possesses a "sign once, verify many ways" property. That is, it allows users to verify the authenticity and integrity of different sub-images extracted from a single compressed codestream protected with a single digital signature.