Image forensics on exchangeable image file format header

Abstract

In recent years, technologies related to digital photography including both hardware and software have gained rapid progress. As a result of these technologies’ wide application in digital still camera (DSC) system, many researchers become increasingly interested in using the digital cameras to record the real happenings for supporting evidences and historical events, such as news reporting in journal and magazine, police investigation and law enforcement, etc. The digital images as the outputs of digital cameras, can record these events. However, accompanied with these emerging digital photography technologies, various kinds of image editing tools have also been developed. With these tools, digital images can be easily altered without any visual clues left. As a result, the credibility of digital images becomes questionable. For example, when a forged photo is adopted as the court judgment evidence, incorrect verdict may happen. In view of this, this thesis focuses on passive image forensics research which uses both the Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) information and the image captured by a camera to verify the authenticity and integrity of the digital image.