Security Analysis of Hardened Retina Based Fuzzy Vault

Abstract

Biometric techniques are gaining importance for personal authentication and identification. Biometric templates are vulnerable to variety of attacks due to their inherent nature. When a person's biometric is compromised his identity is lost. In contrast to password, biometric is not revocable. Therefore providing security to the stored biometric template is very crucial. Crypto biometric systems are authentication systems frame work, which blends the idea of cryptography and biometrics. Fuzzy vault is a proven crypto biometric construct which is used to secure the biometric templates. However fuzzy vault suffer from certain limitations like non-revocability, cross matching. Security of the fuzzy vault is affected by the non-uniform nature of the biometric data. Fuzzy vault when hardened with password overcomes these limitations. Password provides an additional layer of security and enhances user privacy. Retina has certain advantages over other biometric traits. Retinal scans are used in high-end security applications like access control to areas or rooms in military installations, power plants, and other high risk security areas. In the proposed method retina based fuzzy vault is hardened for achieving high level security. The proposed hardened retina based fuzzy vault is robust against stored biometric template attacks.