Robust technique for fingerprint template protection

Abstract

Fingerprint authentication systems generally save data extracted from fingerprint as minutiae template in the database. However, it is often found that databases can be attacked and compromised by the adversary. So if minutiae points of a user are leaked, the fingerprint can be generated from them. The fingerprint cannot be changed as the finger is a part of the human body. Hence, securing information extracted from the fingerprint is required. In this study, the authors propose a highly secure technique that uses location information of the minutia points to construct a highly secured template for a user. For every minutia point, secured modified location is generated by using information of its neighbouring minutiae and a key-set. They have achieved 2, 1, and 3.1% equal error rate values for FVC2002 DB1, DB2, and DB3 fingerprint databases, respectively, under the same key scenario. Analysis done for several attacks shows that the proposed technique is very robust and secure. The experimental results are extremely encouraging and they demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018.