Obfuscated JPEG Image Decompression IP Core for Protecting Against Reverse Engineering [Hardware Matter]

Abstract

Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression and decompression (CODEC) plays a crucial role for all digital camera devices in consumer electronics (CE) products. Conventional JPEG CODEC design techniques are nontrivial and vulnerable to external threats of reverse engineering that result in cloning, counterfeiting, and piracy. This article presents a novel design of an obfuscated JPEG decompression intellectual property (IP) core that enhances the complexity of reverse engineering attacks from the perspective of a rogue element present anywhere in the integrated circuit design flow. The presented IP core design introduces a simplified model for calculating the digital pixel intensity values of a decompressed image during image reconstruction as well as protecting the design against IP cloning. The proposed obfuscated JPEG decompression IP core is capable of achieving the desired results in terms of strength of obfuscation, compression efficiency, mean-square error (MSE), and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) for various images obtained from NASA and the Cornell University public database. © 2012 IEEE.