The approach assumes that most people don’t have the ability to directly attack the image sensor itself. It’s a little buried in the article, but creating refer

The approach assumes that most people don’t have the ability to directly attack the image sensor itself. It’s a little buried in the article, but creating reference images involves having the actual image sensor sign the raw data it captures using a key unique to that sensor. The rest of the device can’t tamper with data anymore. I don’t think there any many people out there with the right equipment to carefully ablate the top of a sensor off, so they can directly inject their own data into the start of signing process. It’s not impossible, but it’s also not the kind of thing most people and organisations are going to be capable of doing. > The creation of a secure digital negative begins with a secure boot of the camera sensor into a specialized reference capture mode. The mode instructs the sensor to cryptographically sign pixel data immediately after capture, and prevents the sensor firmware from modifying the data.