On Enabling Secure Applications Through Off-Line Biometric Identification

In developing secure applications and systems, the designers often must incorpomte secure user identifi­ cation in the design specification. In this paper, we study secure off-line authenticated user identification schemes based on a biometric system that can measure a user's biometric accumtely (up to some Hamming distance). The schemes presented here enhance iden­ tification and authorization in secure applications by binding a biometric template with authorization infor­ mation on a token such as a magnetic strip. Also de­ veloped here are schemes specificaUy designed to min­ imize the compromise of a user's private biometrics data, encapsulated in the authorization information, without requiring secure hardware tokens. In this paper we furthermore study the feasibility of biometrics performing as an enabling technology for secure system and application design. We investigate a new technology which allows a user's biometrics to facilitate cryptogmphic mechanisms.