Design and evaluation of a secure, privacy-preserving and cancelable biometric authentication : Bio-Capsule

Abstract

A large portion of system breaches are caused by authentication failure either during the system login process or even in the post-authentication session, which is further related to the limitations associated with existing authentication approaches. Current authentication methods, whether proxy based or biometrics based, are hardly user-centric; and they either put burdens on users or endanger users' (biometric) security and privacy. In this research, we propose a biometrics based user-centric authentication approach. The main idea is to introduce a reference subject (RS) (for each system), securely fuse the user's biometrics with the RS, generate a BioCapsule (BC) (from the fused biometrics), and employ BCs for authentication. Such an approach is user-friendly, identity-bearing yet privacy-preserving, resilient, and revocable once a BC is compromised. It also supports "one-click sign on" across multiple systems by fusing the user's biometrics with a distinct RS on each system. Moreover, active and non-intrusive authentication can be automatically performed during the user's post-authentication on-line session. In this research, we also formally prove that the proposed secure fusion based BC approach is secure against various attacks and compare the new approach with existing biometrics based approaches. Extensive experiments show that the performance (i.e., authentication accuracy) of the new BC approach is comparable to existing typical biometric authentication approaches, and the new BC approach also possesses other desirable features such as diversity and revocability.