Cracking Fuzzy Vaults and Biometric Encryption (original) (raw)

Vulnerabilities of fuzzy vault schemes using biometric data with traces

2015 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2015

Biometric cryptosystems represent emerging techniques for biometric template protection. These cryptosystems are vulnerable to different types of attacks, as brute force attacks or correlation attacks if several templates are compromised. Another biometric security issue comes from certain biometric data (as fingerprint or face image) that can leave traces, but are, in the same time, the most commonly biometric modalities used in mobile security. In this paper, fuzzy vault biometric cryptosystems are investigated in the case of an attacker possessing altered version of biometric data of real users. Experimental results carried out using fingerprint a1nd face modalities show that this assumption has serious impact on the security of these type of biometric cryptosystems.

Security Analysis of Biometric Cryptosystems : Case Study of Fuzzy Vault Approach

2016

Use of biometric systems is becoming an important alternative to replace traditional authentication such as password. Yet most of biometric authentication systems store original biometric features, unfortunately, without any encryption, threatening though the security and privacy of user’s identity. When biometric data is compromised, unlike a password, it cannot be changed. Therefore, the security of biometric models is essential in designing an authentication system. To achieve this protection of biometric models, two approaches are used: methods based on transformation of user characteristics and biometric cryptosystems. Although biometric cryptosystems are used in several applications (e.g. smart cards), they include several components that have limitations such as risk of falsification and poor performance. A performance evaluation is then compulsory for comparison between different biometric systems. For this reason we proposed in this paper several criteria to assess the secu...

The Fuzzy Vault for fingerprints is Vulnerable to Brute Force Attack

Computing Research Repository, 2007

The \textit{fuzzy vault} approach is one of the best studied and well accepted ideas for binding cryptographic security into biometric authentication. The vault has been implemented in connection with fingerprint data by Uludag and Jain. We show that this instance of the vault is vulnerable to brute force attack. An interceptor of the vault data can recover both secret and

A Review Regarding the Biometrics Cryptography Challenging Design and Strategies

Brain: Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2017

As the information age matures, a biometric identification technology will be at the heart of computer interaction with humans and the biosphere in which they reside. Hence, the reliable information security mechanisms are needed to combat the rising magnitude of identity theft. While cryptography is a powerful tool to achieve information security, one of the main challenges in cryptosystems is to maintain the secrecy of the cryptographic keys. Template protection techniques prevent stored reference data from revealing private biometric information and enhance the security of biometric systems against attacks such as identity theft and cross matching. A critical issue in biometric systems is to protect the template of a user which is typically stored in a database or a smart card. The fuzzy vault construct is a challenging biometric cryptosystem that secures both the secret key and the biometric template by binding them within a cryptographic framework. The helper data itself do not leak any information about the biometric template, yet contain sufficient information to align the template and query biometric accurately. This paper reviews the state of the art biometrics Cryptosystems from the Point of Challenging Designs Strategies.

Security Considerations in Minutiae-based Fuzzy Vaults

The fuzzy vault scheme is a cryptographic primitive that can be used to protect human fingerprint templates where stored. Analyses for most implementations account for bruteforce security only. There are, however, other risks that have to be taken into account such as false-accept attacks, record multiplicity attacks, and information leakage from auxiliary data, such as alignment parameters. In fact, existing work lacks analyses of these weaknesses and are even susceptible to a variety of them. In view of these vulnerabilities, we redesign a minutiaebased fuzzy vault implementation preventing an adversary from running attacks via record multiplicity. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism for robust absolute fingerprint pre-alignment. In combination, we obtain a fingerprint-based fuzzy vault that resists known record multiplicity attacks and that does not leak information about the protected fingerprints from auxiliary alignment data. By experiments, we evaluate the performance of our security-improved implementation which, even though it has slight usability merits as compared to other minutiae-based implementations, provides improved security. However, despite heavy efforts spent in improving security, our implementation is, like all other implementations based on a single finger, subjected to a fundamental security limitation related to the false acceptance rate, i.e., false-accept attack. Consequently, this paper supports the notion that a single finger is not sufficient to provide acceptable security. Instead, implementations for multiple finger or even multiple modalities should be deployed the security of which may be improved by the technical contributions of this paper.

Fingerprint-based Fuzzy Vault: Implementation

2007

Reliable information security mechanisms are required to combat the rising magnitude of identity theft in our society. While cryptography is a powerful tool to achieve information security, one of the main challenges in cryptosystems is to maintain the secrecy of the cryptographic keys. Though biometric authentication can be used to ensure that only the legitimate user has access to the secret keys, a biometric system itself is vulnerable to a number of threats. A critical issue in biometric systems is to protect the template of a user which is typically stored in a database or a smart card. The fuzzy vault construct is a biometric cryptosystem that secures both the secret key and the biometric template by binding them within a cryptographic framework. We present a fully automatic implementation of the fuzzy vault scheme based on fingerprint minutiae. Since the fuzzy vault stores only a transformed version of the template, aligning the query fingerprint with the template is a challenging task. We extract high curvature points derived from the fingerprint orientation field and use them as helper data to align the template and query minutiae. The helper data itself do not leak any information about the minutiae template, yet contain sufficient information to align the template and query fingerprints accurately. Further, we apply a minutiae matcher during decoding to account for nonlinear distortion and this leads to significant improvement in the genuine accept rate. We demonstrate the performance of the vault implementation on two different fingerprint databases. We also show that performance improvement can be achieved by using multiple fingerprint impressions during enrollment and verification.

Securing Fingerprint Template: Fuzzy Vault with Helper Data

2006 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop (CVPRW'06), 2006

An important issue gaining attention in biometrics community is the security and privacy of biometric systems: How robust are these systems against attacks? What happens if the biometric template is lost or stolen? Can the privacy of the users be preserved even when a security breach occurs? Among the numerous attacks that can be launched against these systems, protecting the user template that is stored either locally (e.g., on a smart card) or centrally (e.g., on the server) is a major concern. As a possible solution to this problem, a new class of algorithms, termed biometric cryptosystems has been proposed. These systems do not store the original template but only a transformed version of the template within a cryptographic framework. An example of such systems is the fuzzy vault construct proposed by Juels and Sudan. In this construct, the biometric template is converted to a 2D point cloud, containing a secret such as a symmetric encryption key. The operation of the vault requires some "helper" data. In this paper, we present an implementation of the fuzzy fingerprint vault based on orientation field based helper data that is automatically extracted from the fingerprints. We further show that this helper data does not leak any information about fingerprint minutiae, hence complementing the increased user privacy afforded by the fuzzy fingerprint vault. We demonstrate the vault performance on a public domain fingerprint database.

Keynote Paper: Biometric Encryption: Technology for Strong Authentication, Security and Privacy

The International Federation for Information Processing

This paper looks at privacy-enhanced uses of biometrics, with a particular focus on the privacy and security advantages of Biometric Encryption (BE). It considers the merits of Biometric Encryption for verifying identity, protecting privacy, and ensuring security. In doing so, it argues that BE technologies can help to overcome the prevailing "zero-sum" mentality, which posits that adding privacy to identification and information systems will necessarily weaken security and functionality. It explains how and why BE technology promises a "win-win" scenario for all stakeholders. 1 Biometrics and Privacy During the past decade we have witnessed a rapid evolution and maturation of biometric (and other) information technologies. Biometric technologies are now being deployed in a wide range of public and private sector uses and applications, including: physical and logical access controls, attendance recording, payment systems, crime and fraud prevention/detection, and border security controls. Biometric technologies are now reaching an important threshold in terms of general awareness, acceptance and widespread use. Biometric technologies promise many benefits, including stronger user authentication, greater user convenience, and improved security and operational efficiencies. Biometric technologies are not, however, without their challenges and their risks. These include some important technological challenges (such as accuracy, reliability, data security, user acceptance, cost, and interoperability), as well as challenges associated with ensuring effective privacy protections. Of particular concern when we talk about biometrics is the concept of informational privacy, referring generally to an individual's personal control over the collection, use and disclosure of recorded information about them, as well as to an organization's responsibility for data protection and the safeguarding of personally identifiable information (PII), in its custody or control. A lack of informational privacy can have profound negative impacts on user confidence, trust, and the usage of a given information technology, specific application or deployment, or even an entire industry.

Fingerprint-based fuzzy vault: Implementation and performance

IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2007

Multibiometric template security using fuzzy vault

2008

Template security is a critical issue in biometric systems because biometric templates cannot be easily revoked and reissued. While multibiometric systems overcome limitations such as non-universality and high error rates that affect unibiometric systems, they require storage of multiple templates for the same user. Securing the different templates of a user separately is not optimal in terms of security. Hence, we propose a scheme for securing multiple templates of a user as a single entity. We derive a single multibiometric template from the individual templates and secure it using the fuzzy vault framework. We demonstrate that a multibiometric vault provides better recognition performance and higher security compared to a unibiometric vault. For example, our multibiometric vault based on fingerprint and iris achieves a GAR of 98.2% at a FAR of ≈ 0.01%, while the corresponding GAR values of the individual iris and fingerprint vaults are 88% and 78.8%, respectively. Further, we also show that the security of the system is only 41 bits when the iris and fingerprint vaults are stored separately. On the other hand, the multibiometric vault based on fingerprint and iris provides 49 bits of security.

Cracking Fuzzy Vaults and Biometric Encryption (original) (raw)

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