Press Release | Jan. 29, 2025
NSA Publishes Guidance on Content Credentials to Bolster Multimedia Integrity
FORT MEADE, Md. – The National Security Agency (NSA), through its Artificial Intelligence Security Center (AISC), is releasing joint guidance on Content Credentials, a rapidly evolving standard that can significantly increase the transparency of media.
The Cybersecurity Information Sheet (CSI), “Content Credentials: Strengthening Multimedia Integrity in the Generative AI Era,” discusses how using Content Credentials broadly across the information ecosystem can provide transparency for the provenance of media – including images, video, and audio.
Rapid advancement of tools that allow easy creation, alteration, and dissemination of digital content threatens organizations’ cybersecurity, according to the CSI. AI-generated media is being used for impersonations, fraudulent communications, and brand damage, eroding the prior inherent trust in media. The CSI offers information and guidance based on the current landscape of techniques and threats.
“We are experiencing a pivotal moment in time where our general instinct to believe what we see or hear is being challenged given the advancement and accessibility of Generative AI tools,” said Candice Rockell Gerstner, NSA Applied Research Mathematician who specializes in Multimedia Forensics. “Bolstering trust through transparency in multimedia has never been more critical. Secure and widespread adoption of content provenance standards is a ‘must’ to prepare us for the new reality where AI is everywhere, and seeing is no longer believing.”
Content Credentials are cryptographically signed metadata that allow creators to add information about themselves and their creative process directly to media content. Content Credentials can either be added to media at creation on hardware or at export from software, like generative AI technologies or traditional editing programs. It can also be made more durable by adding a digital watermark and a fingerprint matching system to the media.
The CSI explains how the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) has developed an open specification for providing digital media provenance through Content Credentials. The C2PA is a coalition of technology companies and media organizations that aims to combat the spread of misleading information online by developing open technical standards for verifying the origin and history of digital content.
The CSI poses questions organizations should consider when preparing to implement Content Credentials and provides recommended practices to ensure the preservation of unaltered metadata throughout the media lifecycle.
Additional co-sealing agencies on the CSI are the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), and United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK).
Read the full report here.
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CSI: Content Credentials: Strengthening Multimedia Integrity in the Generative AI Era
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