No tradeoff between confidentiality and performance: An analysis on H.264/SVC partial encryption

• Main Authors: WEI, Zhuo, DING, Xuhua, DENG, Robert H., WU, Yongdong
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: Scalable Video Coding; H.264/SVC; Partial Encryption; Information Security
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1652; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/2651/viewcontent/10.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Partial encryption is often used as a tradeoff between security and performance to protect scalable video data. In this paper, we argue that although partial encryption is strong enough for access control, it is not adequate for content confidentiality protection. We conduct experiments to show that partially encrypted H.264/SVC (scalable video coding) streams leak significant content information from the enhancement layers in all three scalability dimensions. Our analysis concludes that such leakage is caused by the underlying coding techniques used in H.264/SVC, and all layers should be encrypted to protect confidential video streams.