On enabling secure applications through off-line biometric identification

In developing secure applications and systems, the designers often must incorporate secure user identification in the design specification. In this paper, we study secure os-line authenticated user identification schemes based on a biometric system that can measure a user's biometric accurately (up to some Hamming distance). The schemes presented here enhance identification and authorization in secure applications by binding a biometric template with authorization information on a token such as a magnetic strip. Also developed here are schemes specifically designed to minimize the compromise of a user's private biometrics dates, 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 cryptographic mechanisms.