Template Security in Biometric Systems

Date iii Microfilm or other copies of this dissertation are obtainable from ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This dissertation is a testimonial to the people who helped me in some way to become the person who I am right now. It is my distinct pleasure to convey my gratitude to them all in this page. First and foremost I would like to thank to my mother, father and brother whose unconditional love and support made it possible to pursue my dreams for so long and so far away from home. Nothing in a simple paragraph can express the feelings I have for them. I would like to gratefully and sincerely thank Dr. Nasir Memon for his guidance, advice, understanding and patience as one of the rare advisors that students dream that they will find. Throughout my studies with him, he always encouraged me to develop independent thinking, excellent research and presentation skills. He has been a mentor in the fullest sense of the word, I have learned so much from him and I am very fortunate for having known him. He will always inspire me as a researcher, scientist and teacher for the rest of my life. I wish to extend my warmest thanks to all my friends at Poly and many other places around the world who helped and encouraged me to follow my dream. Fear of missing anyone prevented me to mention any names in here. I would also like to thank to all the staff of the ECE and CSE Departments for their ever smiling faces. I am mostly indebted to Valerie Davis and Judy Brown for caring for me and all the other students like a loving parent and for making my life easier. In the last few years biometric technologies have been employed for automatic people authentication and identification at an increasing rate due to several inherent advantages they offer over conventional methods. However, increasing use of biometric technology raised many concerns and one of the biggest challenges to the wide applicability of biometric systems is the secure storage of biometric templates. More specifically, once some biometric data are compromised, they remain compromised forever and the privacy concerns arise from the fact that biometric data are tightly bound to a person's identity such that they can be used to violate their privacy. In the first part of this defense, we will explain a recently proposed cryptographic primitive, called " …