Using Distributed Source Coding to Secure Fingerprint Biometrics

Abstract

We describe a method to encode fingerprint biometrics securely for use, e.g., in encryption or access control. The system is secure because the stored data does not suffice to recreate the original fingerprint biometric. Therefore, a breach in database security does not lead to the loss of biometric data. At the same time the stored data suffices to validate a probe fingerprint. Our approach is based on the use of distributed source coding techniques implemented with graphbased codes. We present a statistical model of the relationship between the enrollment biometric and the (noisy) biometric measurement taking during authentication. We describe how to validate or reject a candidate biometric probe given the probe and the stored encoded data. We report the effectiveness of our method as tested on a database consisting of 579 data sets, each containing roughly 15 measurements of a single finger. We thereby demonstrate a working secure biometric system for fingerprints. ICASSP 2007This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. ABSTRACT We describe a method to encode fingerprint biometrics securely for use, e.g., in encryption or access control. The system is secure because the stored data does not suffice to recreate the original fingerprint biometric. Therefore, a breach in database security does not lead to the loss of biometric data. At the same time the stored data suffices to validate a probe fingerprint. Our approach is based on the use of distributed source coding techniques implemented with graph-based codes. We present a statistical model of the relationship between the enrollment biometric and the (noisy) biometric measurement taking during authentication. We describe how to validate or reject a candidate biometric probe given the probe and the stored encoded data. We report the effectiveness of our method as tested on a database consisting of 579 data sets, each containing roughly 15 measurements of a single finger. We thereby demonstrate a working secure biometric system for fingerprints.

Biometric Systems: Privacy and Secrecy Aspects

“…The helper data are sent to the decoder that also observes the biometric authentication sequence and that has access to the private key . This decoder now forms an estimate of the secret that was generated by the encoder; hence, (15) where is the decoder mapping. Next we define achievability for zero-leakage systems.…”

“…Finally, a formal approach for designing secure biometric systems for three metric distances (Hamming, edit, and set), called fuzzy extractors, was introduced in Dodis et al [13] and Smith [36] and further elaborated in [14]. Fuzzy extractors were subsequently implemented for different biometric modalities in Sutcu et al [37] and Draper et al [15].…”

Biometric Keys for the Encryption of Multimodal Signatures

“…Interestingly, the problem of coding distributed correlated sources has also attracted much interest in the field of video coding recently. The same framework was also employed in (Draper et al (2007)) in order to secure fingerprint biometrics, image authentication (Yao-Chung et al (2007)) and biometric authentication as a wire-tap problem (Cohen & Zemor (2004)). In the seminal work of (Pradhan & Ramchandran (2003)), the distributed source coding using syndromes scheme was proposed.…”

A Hybrid Approach for Generating Secure and Discriminating Face Template

“…They combined the Reed-Solomon code and the Hadamard code for handling burst errors and random errors, respectively. Draper et al [32] applied the distributed source coding to protect fingerprint template and Sutcu et al [33] analyzed and implemented the sketch, which is an error tolerant cryptographic technique, for face biometric.…”