In this paper we introduce a low complexity and accurate technique for target image search and retrieval. This method, which oper- ates directly in the compressed JPEG domain, addresses two of the CBIR challenges stated by The Benchathlon Network regarding the search of a specific image: finding out if an exact same image exists in a database, and identifying this occurrence even when the database image has been compressed with a different coding bit-rate. The proposed technique can be applied in feature-containing or featureless image collections, and thus it is also suitable to search for image copies that might exist on the Web for law enforcement of copyrighted material. The reported method exploits the fact that the phase of the Discrete Cosine Transform co- efficients contains a significant amount of information of a transformed image. By processing only the phase part of these coefficients, a simple, fast, and accurate target image search and retrieval technique is achieved.