International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Abstract
The 9/11 tragedy triggered an increased interest in biometric
passports. According to several sources \cite{sp2}, the electronic
ID market is expected to increase by more than 50\% {\sl per
annum} over the three coming years, excluding China.
\smallskip
To cost-effectively address this foreseen explosion, a very
inexpensive memory card (phonecard-like card) capable of
performing fingerprint matching is paramount.\smallskip
This paper presents such a solution. The proposed protocol is
based on the following idea: the card stores the user\u27s
fingerprint information to which random minutiae were added at
enrolment time (we denote this scrambled template by t). The
card also stores a binary string w encoding which of the
minutiae in t actually belong to the holder. When an
identification session starts, the terminal reads t from the
card and, based upon the incoming scanner data, determines which
of the minutiae in t are genuine. The terminal forms a candidate
w2˘7 and sends it to the card. All the card needs to do is test
that the Hamming weight of w⊕w2˘7 is smaller than a
security threshold d. \smallskip
It follows that the card only needs to embark passive data storage
capabilities, one exclusive-or gate, a shift register, a counter
and a comparator (less than 40 logical gates)