Design and Analysis of a Highly User-Friendly, Secure, Privacy-Preserving, and Revocable Authentication Method

Abstract

A large portion of system breaches are caused by authentication failure, either during the login process or in the post-authentication session; these failures are themselves related to the limitations associated with existing authentication methods. Current authentication methods, whether proxy based or biometrics based, are not user-centric and/or endanger users' (biometric) security and privacy. In this paper, we propose a biometrics based user-centric authentication approach. This method involves introducing a reference subject (RS), securely fusing the user's biometrics with the RS, generating a BioCapsule (BC) from the fused biometrics, and employing BCs for authentication. Such an approach is user friendly, identity bearing yet privacy-preserving, resilient, and revocable once a BC is compromised. It also supports “one-click sign-on” across systems by fusing the user's biometrics with a distinct RS on each system. Moreover, active and non-intrusive authentication can be automatically performed during post-authentication sessions. We formally prove that the secure fusion based approach is secure against various attacks. Extensive experiments and detailed comparison with existing approaches show that its performance (i.e., authentication accuracy) is comparable to existing typical biometric approaches and the new BC based approach also possesses many desirable features such as diversity and revocability.