Biometric cryptosystems based Fuzzy Vault approach: Security analysis

Unlike traditional authentication based on passwords, biometric authentication is seen as an alternative solution because it offers facility, comfort and more security to users. However, biometric systems based on the storage of user model in a database are vulnerable to attacks because the stored model can be stolen or illegitimately used by an attacker to impersonate the user. To protect the users templates from attacks, two broad categories of methods are proposed in the literature: Transformation Biometric Characteristics, and Biometric Cryptosystems. Although biometric cryptosystems are used in several applications (e.g. smart cards), their major challenge is the lack of a security analysis and the limitation of the work on attacks against this type of methods. Hence the aim of this paper is to present criteria for security analysis and to demonstrate the vulnerability of Fuzzy Vault method; a famous approach in biometric cryptosystems.