Security Issues of Biometric Encryption



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Biometric Encryption (BE) has been developed   (other terms for BE are Biometric Cryptosystem, Fuzzy Extractor, Secure Sketch, Helper Data System, Biometric Locking, Biometric Key Generation, etc.). BE can be defined as a group of technologies that securely bind a digital key to a biometric or extract a digital key from the biometric. Instead of a biometric image or template, so-called ‘helper data’ is stored and possibly a hashed version of the key. It is computationally difficult to retrieve either the key or the biometric from the stored helper data; the key is recreated only if the correct biometrics is presented on verification. Thus, the output of BE verification is either a key (correct or incorrect) or a failure message. This “encryption/decryption” process is fuzzy because of the natural variability of biometric samples.