Challenge: Verification of full motion video integrity

Challenge Statement

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) along with Canadian public security partners in law enforcement and national security are looking for solutions for authenticating Full Motion Video (FMV) in order to protect video from unintended or malicious tampering.

Background and Context

Full motion video has become a crucial asset when making operational decisions. A massive amount of FMV is now being captured and stored, and practitioners must rely on automated tools for processing and exploiting the contents of video libraries. Automated tools offer significant benefits, but relying on these tools also creates risks as the technology grows in sophistication. Automated tools can be used by adversaries to gain access to and manipulate FMV assets. Militaries and security organizations who rely on video data must be able to protect it from tampering and verify its authenticity, in order to guarantee the trustworthiness. After video is captured, subsequent changes, performed by either an adversary or insider threat, can be difficult or impossible to detect and trace to their source. Tools and methods are needed for creating a digital “chain of custody” during processing, exploitation and dissemination and for files stored in video libraries. The ability to maintain version control is also needed when downgrading and declassifying videos.

Desired Outcomes

The desired outcome of this effort is a suite of automated tools and methods for encoding, detecting and protecting full motion video from tampering during capture, storage, retrieval or processing operations.

The expected outcomes may include but are not limited to:

• Ability to determine whether video assets, upon later retrieval, are the same as when they were originally recorded, and version control to maintain records of authorized changes;
• Tools and methods for detecting sophisticated tampering of surveillance video;
• Ability to detect and thwart counter-automation spoofing techniques;
• End-to-end platform-to-platform protection with a complete and automated forensic analysis to prevent tampering and to maintain the data integrity of surveillance video;
• Ability to downgrade and declassify video by removing metadata fields or segments, while maintaining video authenticity and a record of the source of authorized changes; and
• Ability to create a digital “chain of custody” for video files to ensure data integrity once file sharing has begun.