On the methodology of fingerprint template protection schemes conception : meditations on the reliability

Abstract Among the most major potential attacks against fingerprint authentication systems are those that target the stored reference templates. These threats are extremely damaging as they can lead to the invasion of user privacy. The countermeasures to secure fingerprint templates are therefore an indisputable necessity. In literature, although there are so many approaches that address this kind of vulnerability, it turns out to be very difficult to generalize their uses. Given that each system has its own particularities, going from the fingerprint trait acquisition to the matching process, the majority of protection schemes, that are proposed as generic solutions, are not sufficiently mature for large-scale deployment. Consequently, we believe that the methodology of fingerprint template protection schemes conception should be oriented to build specific protection schemes for every unprotected system, which will provide the best compromise between performance and security compared to any generic protection solution. By adopting this methodology, we propose in this paper a new protection scheme for fingerprint templates that is well adapted to a well-known existing unprotected fingerprint minutia system. Our experimental results, obtained using standard benchmarks such as FVC 2002 DB1 and DB2, have proven that the proposed technique meets the requirements of revocability, unlinkability, non-invertibility, and high recognition accuracy.