Template Security Using Fuzzy Extractor: A Review

Abstract

Biometric systems are used for the unique identification of a person by using one or more biological traits. There are a number of attack points (levels) in biometric systems, but the major concern is about the security at template level. It is salient that the biometric system should be strong enough to resist the attacks and template theft by the intruders. To overcome the security issues related to the stored template, a bio-cryptosystem primitive technique called fuzzy extractor (FE) is extensively used in variety of biometric applications. FE is a key generation process which extracts the random key from a piece of live biometric data in an error-tolerant way. Thus, for the enhancement of the template security FE acts as a better technique than other protection schemes. This paper firstly explains the basic concept of FE and then presents the review of the FE based on the different traits and combinational approaches. The paper also compares the FE with other protection schemes based on the merits and demerits. The paper concludes the selection of the better biometric combination for practical implementation.