Content authentication and recovery using digital watermarks

1. A tangible computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions comprising:

instructions to decode an auxiliary signal imperceptibly embedded into a host signal, wherein the host signal represents a first content object;

instructions to decompress the decoded auxiliary signal to yield a signal representing a second content object; and

instructions to compare the first and second content objects for perceptual similarity, to authenticate the host signal.

2. A method comprising:

Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)-compressing media data; and

embedding data resulting from the JPEG-compressing into the media data, using a hardware processor, wherein the media data comprises audio or visual information, and wherein the embedding comprises altering the media data to steganographically encode the data resulting from the JPEG-compressing therein.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the JPEG-compressing comprises JPEG2000 compressing.

4. A method comprising:

identifying a first set of data, a second set of data, and a third set of data within processed host data;

calculating a hash of the first and second sets of data using a hardware processor;

decoding auxiliary data imperceptibly embedded in the second set of data;

decoding auxiliary data imperceptibly embedded in the third set of data;

combining the auxiliary data decoded from the second set of data with auxiliary data in the first set of data to yield a new set of host data; and

determining the new set of host data to be authenticated if the calculated hash matches the auxiliary data decoded from the third set of data.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the determining is performed using the hardware processor.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the host signal comprises audio or visual data, and wherein the audio or visual data has been altered to imperceptibly embed the auxiliary signal therein.

7. An apparatus comprising:

a decoder configured to decode an auxiliary signal imperceptibly embedded into a host signal, wherein the host signal represents a first content object,

wherein the decoder is further configured to decompress the decoded auxiliary signal to yield a signal representing a second content object, and

wherein the decoder is configured to compare the first and second content objects for perceptual similarity, to authenticate the host signal.

8. A tangible computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions comprising:

instructions to divide a received media signal into blocks;

instructions to extract hidden compressed bit streams of a first region of a block from a second region in the block;

instructions to evaluate whether the block is altered by comparing the extracted compressed bit streams for the block with the media signal in the first region of the block; and

if an altered block is detected by the comparison, instructions to use a hash to identify a location of altered data, and use an extracted compressed bit stream to replace the altered data.

9. A watermarking system comprising:

a decoder configured to receive a first set of data representing a first content object and generate a second set of data representing a second content object that is perceptually similar to the first content object; and

an encoder configured to digitally watermark the second set of data into the first set of data.

10. The watermarking system of claim 9 , wherein the first and second content objects comprise images, and wherein the decoder is configured to apply a wavelet-based compression technique to the first set of data to yield the second set of data.

11. The watermarking system of claim 9 , wherein the first set of data comprises a group of plural samples, wherein the group has an initial sorting order,

wherein the second set of data comprises a plurality of symbols, and

wherein the encoder is configured to associate the plurality of symbols with a corresponding sorting order, determine if the initial sorting order of the group matches the corresponding sorting order, and, if not, alter the group of samples to have the corresponding sorting order.

12. The watermarking system of claim 11 , wherein the encoder is configured to determine and alter other symbols in the second set of data.

13. A tangible computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions comprising:

instructions to Joint Photograph Experts Group (JPEG)-compress media data; and

instructions to embed data resulting from the JPEG-compressing into the media data, wherein the media data comprises audio or visual information, and wherein the embedding includes altering the media data to steganographically encode the data resulting from the JPEG-compression therein.