Securing Iris Templates using Combined User and Soft Biometric based Password Hardened Fuzzy Vault

Abstract: Personal identification and authentication is very crucial in the current scenario. Biometrics plays an important role in this area. Biometric based authentication has proved superior compared to traditional password based authentication. Anyhow biometrics is permanent feature of a person and cannot be reissued when compromised as passwords. To over come this problem, instead of storing the original biometric templates transformed templates can be stored. Whenever the transformation function is changed new revocable/cancelable templates are generated. Soft biometrics is ancillary information that can be combined with primary biometrics to identify a person in a better way. Iris has certain advantage compared to other biometric traits like fingerprint. Iris is an internal part that is less prone to damage. Moreover is very difficult for an attacker to capture an iris. The key advantage of iris biometrics is its stability or template longevity. Biometric systems are vulnerable to a variety of attacks. This work generates cancelable iris templates by applying user and soft biometric based password transformations and further secures the templates by biometric cryptographic construct fuzzy vault.