Watermarking‐based image authentication robust to JPEG compression

A watermarking‐based image authentication scheme in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain robust to JPEG compression is presented. The binary authentication code is generated from a pseudo‐random sequence based on a secret key and a block‐dependent feature, protecting the scheme against cut‐and‐paste attacks. The watermark is embedded in low‐frequency DCT coefficients selected by the secret key using a modified quantisation index modulation approach. Before embedding, the selected coefficients are quantised using the JPEG quantisation matrix for a selected quality factor, protecting the scheme against JPEG compression with higher quality factors. Experimental results show that the proposed technique achieves very good watermark imperceptibility and is able to detect and locate malicious attacks with good precision. Compared with other existing schemes, the proposed algorithm achieves better performance regarding false positive and false negative detection rates and in discriminating malicious attacks from JPEG compression.