SKA-CANPT: Secure key agreement using cancelable and noninvertible biometrics based on periodic transformation

Abstract

Nowadays, many of the security-providing applications use biometrics-based authentication. However, since each person’s biometrics is unique and non-replaceable, once it is compromised, it will be compromised forever. Therefore, it is hard for the users to trust biometrics. To overcome this problem, in this paper, we propose a novel secure key agreement protocol SKA-CaNPT. Here, we use a periodic transformation function to make biometrics cancelable and noninvertible. At the very end of our SKA-CaNPT protocol, the user and the server make an agreement on a symmetric shared key that is based on the feature points of the user’s biometrics. Therefore, if the transformed data is compromised, then just by changing one of the inputs of the transformation function, we can renew the cryptographic key. As a proof of concept, we apply our SKA-CaNPT protocol on fingerprints. Besides, we apply different security analyses on our protocol. We use Shannon’s entropy and Hamming distance metrics to analyze the randomness and the distinctiveness of the agreed keys. Moreover, according to the low IKGR (Incorrect Key Generation Rate), high CKGR (Correct Key Generation Rate) and high attack complexity possessed by our SKA-CaNPT protocol, we can conclude that our scheme is secure against brute-force, replay and impersonation attacks.