A Biometric Identity Based Signature Scheme

Abstract

We describe an identity based signature scheme that uses biometric information to construct the public key. Such a scheme would be beneficial in many repudiation situations for example a legal dispute over whether a contract had been signed or not by a user. A biometric reading provided by the alleged signer would be enough to verify the signature. We make use of fuzzy extractors to generate a key string from a variable biometric measurement. We use this biometric based key string and an elliptic curve point embedding technique to create the public key and corresponding private key. We then make use of a pairing based signature scheme to perform signing and verification with these keys. We discuss security issues of the system and suggest countermeasures to attack. Finally we describe a working biometric signature scheme developed in part by reusing components in an existing Java Identity Based Encryption implementation.