How to Attack Biometric Systems in Your Spare Time

Biometric systems were proposed and developed to provide a better and stronger factor of authentication. Such systems authenticate individuals based on physical and behavioral traits such as fingerprints, iris, face, palm print, hand geometry, voice, etc. The use of biometric traits to replace existing passwords or as access keys has proven to be highly secure against physical attacks. It is a fact that malicious attacks are getting smarter, more widespread and increasingly difficult to detect, and dozens more are added to the menagerie each day. Attacking biometric systems physically is quite difficult indeed. However, by mounting digital attacks one can see how biometric systems are vulnerable. We discuss the different types of software and hardware vulnerabilities that exist in biometric systems, and show how biometric template security can be compromised. We present a new attack point at the application level that has not been addressed and discussed in previous work. We also describe how biometric cryptosystems can overcome some of the disadvantages in traditional biometric recognition systems, and show how such systems can be used effectively in Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems.