Information about Biometrics and its

security

By Ridham Bhatt

Science Fiction?

What was your imagination about Science Fiction movies when you were a kid?

For example we watched Minority report and thought what an unnatural technology they have there in a movie. (

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwoAxSvYCzk&feature=related)

Anything is possible the way technology is growing.

Continue

Biometric is just one of the area where technology is developing itself at its fastest growth.

Objectives

Introduction.

Types of biometric.

Advantages.

Disadvantages.

Comparison.

Vulnerabilities of Biometric.

Introduction The word biometric can be defined as “life-measure.”

It is used in security and access control applications to measurable physical characteristics of a person that can be checked on an automated basis. This may sound incredible but the way technology is growing this will shortly be possible everywhere.

Biometric technology is replacing pin codes and passwords which can forgotten, lost or stolen.

Types of Biometric & its characteristics

Irish Recognition - Uses a video camera to pinpoint the independent coordinates of the eye

Face Recognition - Defines a dozen or so points on the face and measures the distance between them

Hand - Measures the size and angles of persons hand features

Voice - Analyzes the sound waves and speech patterns of recorded voice.

Fingerprint - Looks for pattern ends and their changes in direction.

Continue

Palm vein Authentication - This system uses an infrared beam to penetrate the users hand as it is waved over the system; the veins within the palm of the user are returned as black lines

Retina Scan - A retina scan provides an analysis of the capillary blood vessels located in the back of the eye

Advantages

Biometric identification can provide extremely accurate, secured access to information; fingerprints, retinal and iris scans produce absolutely unique data sets when done properly

Current methods like password verification have many problems (people write them down, they forget them, they make up easy-to-hack passwords)

Automated biometric identification can be done very rapidly and uniformly, with minimum amount of training.

Your identity can be verified without resort to documents that may be stolen, lost or altered.

The techniques like DNA profiling are highly reliable and efficient that’s why it is going to be adopted widely.

DisadvantagesSome biometric system can establish an identity only to a certain level of accuracy.

FAR or FRR is probability by which system can accept or reject a genuine individual.

Cost of the implementation tools is too high (such as finger print sensors are extremely expensive).

The cost of the storing biometric templates and of the computing power required to process and match biometric measurement is quite high.

There are some techniques like DNA profiling which is complicated and time taking process.

Change of hair style in facial recognition, wearing glasses, and light intensity in retina scanning may effect the authentication process.

Performance Comparison of biometric

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/%7Emdr/teaching/modules/security/lectures/images/Biometric_comparisons.jpg

Security issues concerning Fingerprint

recognition Using Grease Stains Left on the Pad : Typically, a human finger contains so much grease that it leaves a non-visible mark where it touches and thus usually leaves a clear mark also on the scanner. This stain can be brought visible in many ways and even a mere breath can show the print very clearly. The scheme is to use this stain by breathing on the scanner and making the scanner think that there is a live finger pressed against its pad. A variation of this idea is to use a finger-like substance that has a flat surface and press it against the pad leaving the grease stain under it.

Grease is also known as a method of lubrication and corrosion guard. This is based on the fact that grease rejects water and that it is not a very good conductor. When there is a grease stain left on the surface of the pad, it can be used to prevent water or moist breath attaching that point. Water on the other half has a decent conductance and approximately the same capacitance of the skin. When we breathe, the moist gathers up in the valleys of the fingerprint and makes an inverted duplicate of the finger. Despite this inversion, the relations of the characteristic points are the same as in the enrolled fingerprint and so it could be detected as legitimate user’s print.

Security issues concerning Voice

recognition

A way has been configured for unauthorized users to hack the system by simply obtaining a recording of the authorized person's password

voices tend to change both over time and when users are sick increasing false rejection rates. Finally many people just do not like talking to a computer.

Vulnerabilities of iris verification

Iris scanning is a relatively new technology and is incompatible with the very substantial investment that the law

enforcement and immigration authorities of some countries have already made into fingerprint recognition.

Iris recognition is very difficult to perform at a distance larger than a few meters and if the person to be

identified is not cooperating by holding the head still and looking into the camera.

As with other photographic biometric technologies, iris recognition is susceptible to poor image quality, with

associated failure to enroll rates.

As with other identification infrastructure (national residents databases, ID cards, etc.), civil rights activists have

voiced concerns that iris-recognition technology might help governments to track individuals beyond their will.

One of the first efforts in the vulnerabilities study of iris verification systems had an iris

image of a legitimate user was printed with a high resolution inkjet printer to fraudulently

access the system. The trick was only successful if the pupil in the image was cut off and

the eye of the impostor placed behind the paper to give the impression to the system of a

real eye

Credits

www.irisrecognition.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.csse.uwa.edu

http://web.mit.edu/6.857/OldStuff/Fall95/lectures/lecture10.ps

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/23/biometric_sensors_beaten_senseless/

THE END