Privacy Weaknesses in Biometric Sketches

The increasing use of biometrics has given rise to new privacy concerns. Biometric encryption systems have been proposed in order to alleviate such concerns: rather than comparing the biometric data directly, a key is derived from these data and subsequently knowledge of this key is proved. One specific application of biometric encryption is the use of biometric sketches: in this case biometric template data are protected with biometric encryption. We address the question whether one can undermine a user’s privacy given access to biometrically encrypted documents, and more in particular, we examine if an attacker can determine whether two documents were encrypted using the same biometric. This is a particular concern for biometric sketches that are deployed in multiple locations: in one scenario the same biometric sketch is deployed everywhere; in a second scenario the same biometric data is protected with two different biometric sketches. We present attacks on template protection ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SP
• Authors: Koen Simoens, Pim Tuyls, Bart Preneel
• Keywords: Biometric Encryption, Biometric Sketches, Biometrics, Security Privacy, SP 2009