Multilevel Network Security Based on Iris Biometric

Abstract

Network security and protection of data have been of great concern and a subject of research over the years. There are many different forms of cryptographic mechanisms like AES, Triple DES, MD5 proposed to guarantee data security. In a network, the success of the algorithm depends on the length of the key that user uses. It is observed that due to convenience of remembering the key, users use short keys. This increases the vulnerability of the data. In this work we propose a unique authentication and encryption technique using IRIS biometric pattern of a person. At the time of registration to the network, a person's IRIS is scanned and phase features of the image are generated using Log-Gabor filter. Filter output is 64 x 64 vectors which is difficult to use as key or to transmit over the network for authentication. Therefore a local binary code of sixty four byte is extracted of this matrix and is transmitted to the server. As this is the basis of entire algorithm functioning, we use a secured socket layer with SH1 and 128 keys(Browser supported) for this communication. Server stores this key as users Identity or password. When he wants to transfer data to another user, first his IRIS pattern is generated, it is sent to the server, server authenticates the user by comparing the incoming IRIS code with the one saved in database by using Euclidian distance. Once authenticated, user is allowed to exchange information over the network. Every information is now be encrypted using the receivers IRIS code with MD5. The success of the technique depends upon the Quality of the scan and recognition rate. There is always an error margin of 5% to 10% when IRIS code is generated which may result in an unsuccessful authentication. Therefore at the time of registration, we scan the person's eyes thrice and two codes are embedded in a smart card as reference code. This smart card is issued to the user by the administrator. At the time of authentication, user code is first compared with the code of smart card and if matched (Even with an error margin of 10%) then only his code is transmitted to server for authentication. Storing the rough key in the server is not safe as if the server data is hacked, then these keys can be easily tampered with. Hence rather than storing the rough keys, we embed them in random images using steganographic means and store the image binary in the server. Thus not only the data in the network, but also the server data is secured.