An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Revocability and Reusability in Secure Biometrics /Author=Wang, Y.; Rane, S.; Draper, S.C.; Ishwar, P. /CreationDate=February 6, 2011 /Subject=Information Security

Secure biometric systems are designed to allow authentication without requiring a reference biometric sample to be stored in the clear at the access control device. Instead, a template extracted from the reference biometric is stored on the device. An enrolled user can be authenticated by the template combined with a legitimate test biometric. However, an attacker who infiltrates the device only discovers the template, which reveals little or no information about the true biometric. We present a general framework for secure biometric authentication systems, and then provide a comparative information-theoretic analysis of two related realizations: (1) fuzzy commitment, in which authentication is framed as a problem of correcting errors between the reference and test biometrics, and (2) secure sketches, in which authentication is framed as a Slepian-Wolf decoding problem. We derive the false reject rates, false accept rates and successful attack rates for both realizations. We also consider the information leaked about a user’s biometric identity when the database of biometric templates is compromised. Finally, we analyze a scenario in which the same biometric has been used to generate templates for several access control devices, some of which have been compromised by an adversary. It is shown that, two-factor versions of fuzzy commitment and secure sketch not only allow revocability, but also provide resistance to attacks in which the adversary compromises several databases at the same time. Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA) This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c © Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 2011 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Revocability and Reusability in Secure Biometrics Ye Wang Boston University Boston, MA. yw@bu.edu Shantanu Rane Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Cambridge, MA. rane@merl.com Stark C. Draper University of Wisconsin Madison, WI sdraper@ece.wisc. edu Prakash Ishwar Boston University Boston, MA. pi@bu.edu Abstract—Secure biometric systems are designed to allowSecure biometric systems are designed to allow authentication without requiring a reference biometric sample to be stored in the clear at the access control device. Instead, a template extracted from the reference biometric is stored on the device. An enrolled user can be authenticated by the template combined with a legitimate test biometric. However, an attacker who infiltrates the device only discovers the template, which reveals little or no information about the true biometric. We present a general framework for secure biometric authentication systems, and then provide a comparative information-theoretic analysis of two related realizations: (1) fuzzy commitment, in which authentication is framed as a problem of correcting errors between the reference and test biometrics, and (2) secure sketches, in which authentication is framed as a Slepian-Wolf decoding problem. We derive the false reject rates, false accept rates and successful attack rates for both realizations. We also consider the information leaked about a user’s biometric identity when the database of biometric templates is compromised. Finally, we analyze a scenario in which the same biometric has been used to generate templates for several access control devices, some of which have been compromised by an adversary. It is shown that, two-factor versions of fuzzy commitment and secure sketch not only allow revocability, but also provide resistance to attacks in which the adversary compromises several databases at the same time.