Biometrics-Based Authentication: A New Approach

Authentication is a fundamental issue to any trust-oriented computing system and also a critical part in many security protocols. Performing authentication is notoriously difficult. Biometrics has been widely used and adopted as a promising authentication method due to its advantages over some existing methods, particularly, its resistance to losses incurred by theft of passwords and smart cards. However, biometrics introduces its own challenges, such as being irreplaceable once compromised. Moreover, the use of biometrics introduces privacy concern. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective biometrics-based authentication solution. The proposed approach introduces new constructs - Reference Subject and Biometric Capsule, and stores the ``difference'' (called Biometric Capsule) between the user and the Reference Subject for authentication without revealing a user's original biometric information. This approach supports replaceability and protect users' privacy. Moreover, the proposed approach creates more advantages: (a) being user-friendly without any additional burden on users and possessing one-for-all power; (b) being generic enough to be applied to various biometrics (e.g., fingerprint, face, iris) or combinations of them; and (c) being adaptive in terms of security and privacy to fit different authentication models, application requirements, available resources, and trusted or non-fully-trusted environments. The experimental results on iris validate its performance and prove it a practical mechanism.