Effectiveness of fully homomorphic encryption to preserve the privacy of biometric data

Wilson Abel Alberto Torres, Nandita Bhattacharjee, Bala Srinivasan

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Biometrics offers higher accuracy for personal recognition as well as provides greater security than traditional methods because of its properties. However, ironically, these properties are also weaknesses because biometric data is permanently linked with an individual and cannot be revoked or cancelled, especially when biometric data is compromised, which can lead to a serious privacy issue. By reviewing current approaches, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is considered as a promising solution for this privacy issue because of its ability to perform computations in the encrypted domain. We studied the effectiveness of FHE when it is used in biometric systems. The main contributions of this paper are the implementation of a privacy-preserving iris biometric authentication protocol adapted to lattice-based FHE and a sound security analysis of authentication and privacy. This work is concluded with some factors to be addressed to enhance privacy as well as some considerations to improve the performance of this implementation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe 16th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-Based Applications & Services, iiWAS 2014
    Subtitle of host publicationDecember 4-6, 2014, Hanoi, Vietnam [proceedings]
    EditorsMaria Indrawan-Santiago, Matthias Steinbauer, Hong-Quang Nguyen, A Min Tjoa, Ismail Khalil, Gabriele Anderst-Kotsis
    Place of PublicationNew York, New York
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
    Pages152-158
    Number of pages7
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450330015
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2014
    EventInformation Integration and Web-based Applications and Services 2014 - Hanoi, Vietnam
    Duration: 4 Dec 20146 Dec 2014
    Conference number: 16th
    https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/2684200 (Proceedings)

    Conference

    ConferenceInformation Integration and Web-based Applications and Services 2014
    Abbreviated titleiiWAS 2014
    Country/TerritoryVietnam
    CityHanoi
    Period4/12/146/12/14
    Internet address

    Keywords

    • Fully homomorphic encryption
    • Biometric
    • Privacy-preserving

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