Authentication of MPEG-4 data: risks and solutions

MPEG-4 is an international object-based standard that provides technological basis for digital television, interactive graphics and multimedia applications. These objects can be natural or synthetic e.g. textures, 3D objects, videos or sounds. In this paper we suggest an integrity approach to protect the content of MPEG-4 data. The essential part of this approach is to embed a robust watermark into each visual, audio and 3D object. The content fragile watermark verifying the integrity of a scene is the sum of all information retrieved from the robust watermarks extracted from the objects of the scene. The information of the fragile watermark will be distributed redundantly to all robust watermarks of the scene. Another essential part of our approach is to embed a part of the scene description or object descriptors as a watermark message into the video or audio streams. The amount of embedded information depends on the payload of the watermarking algorithms. We also analyze the possibility of embedding equivalent information into 3D models, depending on the application.