A New Cryptographic Protocol for Biometric Security Technologies

Abstract

We propose a new cryptographic protocol for remote authentication. This protocol is suitable when the signature key is very large. The emerging paradigm of verification through biometric samples, such as fingerprints, retinal images etc., naturally represents such a scenario. The proposed protocol cuts down the bandwidth requirement by selectively transmitting a very small part of the large signature, instead of the large signature itself. In addition, the protocol offers another extra layer of security if used on top of RSA. The design of the protocol is based on the notion of Probabilistic Checking of Proofs (PCP). The computational overhead involved in realizing this scheme would be very small since it consists mostly of arithmetic over polynomial fields which is typically very fast and can be implemented with inexpensive hardware or software.