Security protocols for biometrics-based cardholder authentication in smartcards

Abstract

The use of biometrics, and fingerprint recognition in particular, for cardholder authentication in smartcard systems is growing in popularity, and such systems are the focus of this paper. In such a biometrics-based cardholder authentication system, sensitive data will typically need to be transferred between the smartcard and the card reader. We propose strategies to ensure integrity of the sensitive data exchanged between the smartcard and the card reader during authentication of the cardholder to the card, and also to provide mutual authentication between card and reader. We examine two possible types of attacks: replay attacks and active attacks in which an attacker is able to calculate hashes and modify messages accordingly. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.