An approach to cryptographic key distribution through fingerprint based key distribution center

In information and communication technology, security of information is provided with cryptography. In cryptography, key management is an important part of the whole system as the security lies on secrecy of cryptographic key. Symmetric cryptography uses same key (secret key) for message encryption as well as cipher text decryption. Distribution of the secret key is the main challenge in symmetric cryptography. In symmetric cryptography, key distribution center (KDC) takes the responsibility to distribute the secret key between the communicating parties to establish a secure communication among them. In the traditional KDC, a unique key is used between communicating parties for the purpose of distributing session keys. In this respect, our proposed approach uses fingerprint biometrics of communicating parties for the purpose of unique key generation and distribute session key with the fingerprint based key of user. As the key is generated from fingerprint of user, there is no scope of attacks to break the unique key. In this way, the unique key is associated with biometric data of communicating party and the key is not need to remember by that party. This approach converts the knowledge based authentication to biometric based authentication of KDC. At the same time, our approach protects the privacy of fingerprint identity as the identity of user is not disclosed even when the KDC is compromised.