Secure Protection of Biometric Templates

• US 20080222496A1
• Filed: 09/11/2006
• Published: 09/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Tuyls, Pim Theo, Akkermans, Antonius Hermanus Maria, Goseling, Jasper
• Granted Patent: US 8,433,983 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/777
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/08 Randomization, e.g. dummy operations or using noise
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/34 Encoding or coding, e.g. Huffman coding or error correction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3231 Biological data, e.g. fingerprint, voice or retina network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using biometrical features in a packet data network H04L63/0861

Abstract

This invention relates to methods and devices for verifying the identity of a person based on a sequence of feature components extracted from a biometric sample. Thereafter, the feature components are quantized and assigned a data bit sequence in such a way that adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1. The data bit sequences are concatenated into a bit string, and said bit string is combined with a helper data set by using an exclusive disjunction (XOR) operation into a codeword. Finally, the codeword is decoded into a secret V and a secret S is matched with the secret V.

Claims

1. A method for verifying the identity of a person based on a sequence of feature components extracted from a biometric sample, comprising:

quantizing each feature component,

assigning a data bit sequence to each quantized feature component in such a way that adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1,

concatenating said data bit sequences into a bit string,

combining said bit string with a helper data set using an exclusive disjunction (XOR) operation into a codeword,

decoding said codeword into a secret, and

matching a secret with the decoded secret.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein each feature component is quantized into quantization intervals in such a way that the probability for each quantization interval is equal according to a statistical model.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said decoding is made according to an error correcting code.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein said error correcting model is a binary error correcting code.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein said binary error correcting code is based on a Hamming code.

6. The method according to claim 3, wherein said error correcting code is a multilevel error correcting code.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein said multilevel error correcting code is based on a BCH (Bose, Ray-Chaudhuri, Hocquenghem) code.

8. A method for creating a helper data set based on a sequence of feature components extracted from a biometric sample and a secret to enable verifying the identity of a person, comprising:

quantizing each feature component,

assigning a data bit sequence to each quantized feature component in such a way that adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1,

concatenating said data bit sequences into a bit string,

encoding said secret into a codeword, and

combining said bit string with the codeword into said helper data set by using an exclusive disjunction (XOR) operation.

9. A device for verifying the identity of a person based on a sequence of feature components extracted from a biometric sample, comprising:

a quantizer for quantizing the feature components,

an assigner for assigning a bit sequence to each quantized feature component in such a way that two adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1,

a concatenater for concatenating each bit sequence into a bit string,

an XOR-operator for combining said bit string with a helper data set into a codeword,

a decoder for decoding said codeword into a secret, and

a matcher for matching a secret with the decoded secret.

10. A device for creating a helper data set based on a sequence of feature components extracted from a biometric sample and a secret, comprising:

a quantizer for quantizing the feature components,

an assigner for assigning a data bit sequence to each quantized feature component in such a way that two adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1,

a concatenater for concatenating each bit sequence into a bit string, and

an XOR-operator for combining said bit string with a corresponding codeword based on said secret into said helper data set.

11. A computer medium having embodied thereon a computer program, when executed, for carrying out acts comprising:

quantizing each feature component;

assigning a data bit sequence to each quantized feature component in such a way that adjacent quantization intervals have a Hamming distance of 1;

concatenating said data bit sequences into a bit string;

combining said bit string with a helper data set using an exclusive disjunction operation into a codeword;

decoding said codeword into a secret; and

matching a secret with the decoded secret.