Security notions of biometric remote authentication revisited

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a new biometric-based remote authentication (BRA) system by combining distributed biometric authentication and cancelable biometrics. The motivation of this construction is based on our new attacks against the BRA schemes designed according to the security model of Bringer et al. Specifically, we prove that identity privacy cannot be achieved for the schemes in this model, if biometrics is assumed as public data and a publicly stored sketch is employed for improved accuracy. Besides, a statistical attack is shown that is effective even if the sketch is stored as encrypted. To prevent statistical attacks, we propose a weaker notion of identity privacy, where the adversary has limited power. Next, we design a BRA protocol in cancelable biometric setting, which is also applicable for biometrics represented as a set of features. For this setting, we define a stronger security notion, which is guaranteed for the BRA schemes that are vulnerable to our attacks if they are implemented in cancelable biometric setting. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.