Biometric based key-generation system for multimedia data security

In today's digital world security and fast authentication is very important. This paper presents a method for generating a cryptographic key with help of user unique biometric property. The biometric is connected with user throughout his lifetime and is unalterable. It is very difficult to remember knowledge based passwords key, therefore biometrics keys are proving to be better alternative to these non-memorable passwords. The proposed approach uses fingerprint biometric to generate a biometric key using traditional algorithms like MD5 and SHA. Based on Entropy, it is found that keys generated through biometrics are more random in nature and thus better than regular alphanumeric textual keys. Mean Square Error also confirms that there is a he difference between biometric based keys and general knowledge based alphanumeric keys. Theoretically, key generated also reduces the cost of eavesdropping, and address the problem of non-repudiation with the increased security against brute force attack as compared to traditional knowledge based password. The proposed technique is evaluated on different fingerprint images using MATLAB version 2010a which will be beneficial for researchers & students.