Vulnerabilities in Biometric Encryption Systems

Abstract. The goal of a biometric encryption system is to embed a secret into a biometric template in a way that can only be decrypted with a biometric image from the enroled person. This paper describes a potential vulnerability in such systems that allows a less-than-brute force regeneration of the secret and an estimate of the enrolled image. This vulnerability requires the biometric comparison to “leak” some information from which an analogue for a match score may be calculated. Using this match score value, a “hill-climbing” attack is performed against the algorithm to calculate an estimate of the enrolled image, which is then used to decrypt the code. Results are shown against a simplified implementation of the algorithm of Soutar et al. (1998).

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: AVBPA
• Authors: Andy Adler
• Keywords: AVBPA 2005, Biometric Encryption, Biometrics, Match Score, Multimedia