Secure scalable streaming and secure transcoding with JPEG-2000

Secure scalable streaming (SSS) enables low-complexity, high-quality transcoding at intermediate, possibly untrusted, network nodes without compromising the end-to-end security of the system S. J. Wee, J. G. Apostolopoulos (2001). SSS encodes, encrypts, and packetizes video into secure scalable packets in a manner that allows downstream transcoders to perform transcoding operations such as bitrate reduction and spatial downsampling by simply truncating or discarding packets, and without decrypting the data. Secure scalable packets have unencrypted headers that provide hints such as optimal truncation points to downstream transcoders. Using these hints, downstream transcoders can perform near-optimal secure transcoding. This paper presents a secure scalable streaming system based on motion JPEG-2000 coding with AES or triple-DES encryption. The operational rate-distortion (R-D) performance for transcoding to various resolutions and quality levels is evaluated, and results indicate that end-to-end security and secure transcoding can be achieved with near R-D optimal performance. The average overhead is 4.5% for triple-DES encryption and 7% for AES, as compared to the original media coding rate, and only 2-2.5% overhead as compared to end-to-end encryption which does not allow secure transcoding.