An efficient algorithm for the implementation of fingerprint authentication on smartcards

• Authors: Michelle Govan;Tom Buggy
• Venue: CNIS '07 Proceedings of the Fourth IASTED International Conference on Communication, Network and Information Security
• Year: 2007

In recent years, biometrics has become established as the pinnacle of reliable authentication, able to overcome the limitations of traditional methods. With the ability to securely store data and execute functions on-card, smartcards can play an important role in providing secure solutions that are both highly usable and trusted, while preserving user privacy. However technological constraints currently prohibit computationally intensive applications on-card, making implementation a challenging problem: to date, current 'match-on-card' applications work by releasing a portion of the template into the off-card environment, thereby reintroducing significant security vulnerabilities. With the aim of developing a secure implementation of a biometric matching algorithm within a resource constrained environment, this paper establishes a disturbance rejection methodology capable of differentiating between equivalent and extraneous data. Initial studies demonstrate this novel concept is capable of yielding significant reductions in the magnitude of computation through the refinement of the feature search-space, opening up the prospect of truly secure 'match-on-card' systems.