Enhancing Security in Augmented Reality Through Hash-Based Data Hiding and Hierarchical Authentication Techniques

With the increasing integration of augmented reality (AR) in various applications, ensuring secure access and content authenticity has become a critical challenge. This paper proposes an innovative and robust authentication framework for protecting AR multimedia content through a hash-based data-hiding technique. Leveraging the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in the YCbCr color space, the method embeds multiple cryptographic hash signatures directly into the AR visual data. This design not only utilizes the symmetric property between two consecutive AR contents but also allows users to verify the connectivity between two AR digital contents by checking the embedded hash values. These embedded signatures support hierarchical, multi-level authentication, verifying not only the integrity and authenticity of individual AR objects but also their contextual relationships within the AR environment. The proposed system exhibits exceptional resilience to tampering, effectively identifying whether two consecutive e-pages in the AR content have been altered, while preserving high perceptual quality with PSNR values above 45 dB and SSIM scores consistently exceeding 0.98. This work presents a practical, real-time solution for enhancing AR content security, contributing significantly to the advancement of secure multimedia systems in next-generation interactive platforms.