Biometric Essay

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Now-a-day, biometric authentication system or simply biometric system, offers a reliable and user-friendly solution to the problem of identity management by establishing the identity of an individual based on “who the person is”, rather than the knowledge-based i.e. “what the person knows" or token-based i.e. “what the person carries” (Jain et al., 1999). The word biometrics is derived from the Greek words bios (meaning life) and metron (meaning measurement); biometric identifiers are measurements from living human body (Maltoni et al., 2003). Biometric system refers to automatically identify or verify an individual's identity based on his physiological characteristics (e.g. fingerprints, face, iris and hand geometry) and behavioral characteristics (e.g. gait, voice and signature) (Figure 2.1). Ancillary characteristics (also known as soft biometric) such as gender, ethnicity, age, eye color, skin color, scars and tatoos also provide some information about the identity of a person. However, soft biometric traits do not provide sufficient evidence to precisely determine the identity (Jain et al., 2004a). Biometric traits provide a unique and permanent binding between an individual and his identity. This “binding" cannot be easily lost, forgotten, shared or forged and free from making false repudiation claims. Biometrics offers several advantages over conventional security measures. These include
(a) Non-repudiation: A user/perpetrator can claim that his identity was stolen in order deny service or committing the crime pleading. However, biometrics is indefinitely associated with a user and hence it cannot be lent or stolen making such repudiation infeasible.
(b) Accuracy and Security: Conventional identification systems are prone...

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...dio et al., 2002).
(f) Spoof attacks and Template security: Spoof attack refers to the deliberate attempt to manipulate one’s biometric template in order to avoid recognition, or generate biometric artifacts in order to take someone’s identity. And still biometric systems are susceptible to attacked in a number of ways (Ratha et al., 2001). For example, a fingerprint recognition system can be circumvented by using fake or spoof fingers (Nandakumar et al., 2007, Nandakumar et al., 2007a). Behavioral traits like voice (Eriksson et al., 1997) and signature (Harrison et al., 1981) are more susceptible to such attacks than physiological traits. Security of biometric templates is also another critical issues in biometric systems. The stolen biometric template can be used to gain unauthorized access to the system (Adler, 2003, Cappelli et al., 2007, Ross et al., 2007).

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