Operational bio-hash to preserve privacy of fingerprint minutiae templates

• Published in: IET biometrics Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 76 - 84
• Main Authors: Belguechi, Rima, Cherrier, Estelle, Rosenberger, Christophe, Ait-Aoudia, Samy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stevenage The Institution of Engineering and Technology 01.06.2013; IET; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: Accuracy; Algorithms; Applied sciences; Benchmarking; biometric modality; Biometrics; cancellable template generation; Context; cryptography; data privacy; Digital; digital identity privacy management; digital identity security; diversity properties; Exact sciences and technology; fingerprint identification; fingerprint minutiae template privacy preservation; fingerprint storage; Fingerprints; Fourier transforms; FVC2002 benchmark database; Information management; Information, signal and communications theory; irreversibility properties; Management; operational bio-hash; Pattern recognition; Preserves; Privacy; Questions; sensitive information; Signal processing; Storage; Telecommunications and information theory; unordered noisy minutiae feature sets; fingerprint identification; fingerprint storage; fingerprint minutiae template privacy preservation; biometric modality; cryptography; diversity properties; FVC2002 benchmark database; sensitive information; digital identity privacy management; cancellable template generation; unordered noisy minutiae feature sets; data privacy; digital identity security; irreversibility properties; operational bio-hash; Biometrics; Performance evaluation; Private life; Database; Pattern recognition; Automatic recognition
• ISSN: 2047-4938; 2047-4946; 2047-4946
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-bmt.2012.0039

The storage of fingerprints is an important issue as this biometric modality is more and more deployed for real applications. Considering minutiae templates as sensitive information, a key question concerns the secure and privacy management of this digital identity. Indeed, if an attacker obtains the minutiae template of a subject, he/she will be able to generate a fingerprint having the same characteristics. Instead of directly storing the minutiae templates, the authors propose in this study a new adaptation of BioHashing to generate a cancellable template in the context of un-ordered set of noisy minutiae features. To the authors knowledge, little interest has been paid in the literature to the question of protecting minutiae template by BioHashing until now. Using the FVC2002 benchmark database, they show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in term of privacy preservation. They show how the proposed method copes with irreversibility and diversity properties and therefore can be efficient in a realistic context.