Thesis Abstract
Biometric authentication and identification systems are increasingly being used in place of traditional security systems. The introduction of new technology brings new security vulnerabilities to computer systems. One vulnerability introduced by these systems is that of masquerade through the use of a physical or digital artefact.
The possibility of masquerade through the use of an artefact created from the information contained within a stored template has in many cases been ignored, or asserted to be infeasible. This thesis examines the question of whether such an attack is possible.
A generic method is proposed for the development of an artefact for masquerade based on the information contained within a stored template. This method is then applied to a specic ngerprint system, and the resulting fingerprint images are tested against a database containing the corresponding templates. A positive match for all 25 tested arch fingerprints is achieved. This indicates that it is possible to create an image of a fingerprint based on the information contained within the stored template.
Thus, more attention will have to go to securing stored fingerprint data, unless the feature extraction process can be proven to be one-way. It would appear that this conclusion is generalisable to many other biometrics, and perhaps to all biometrics. The generic method proposed can be applied in order to determine whether that proposition is correct.
