Evaluating Biometric Encryption Key Generation Using Handwritten Signatures

Abstract

In traditional cryptosystems, user authentication is based on the possession of secret keys/tokens. Such keys can be forgotten, lost, stolen, or may be illegally shared, but an ability to relate a cryptographic key to biometric data can enhance the trustworthiness of a system. In this paper, we demonstrate how biometric keys can be generated directly from live biometrics, under certain conditions, by partitioning feature space into subspaces and partitioning these into cells, where each cell subspace contributes to the overall key generated. We evaluate the proposed scheme on real biometric data, representing both genuine samples and attempted imitations. Experimental results then demonstrate the extent to which the proposed technique can be implemented reliably in possible practical scenarios.