Security of Biometric Systems

Nowadays, there are increasing security needs influencing many parts of human life. Various biometric characteristics are/can be used as a secure identifier, but the biggest market share belongs to fingerprints. Nevertheless, the expansion of fingerprint recognition and the familiarity of people with this technology caused, that the fingerprints are the most attacked biometric characteristic. This book starts with short introduction to biometrics and fingerprints. The large part of this book is dedicated to detailed overview of weak places of biometric systems together with the description of possible attacks and securing. Then it continues with the description of published methods of liveness detection together with their advantages and disadvantages and presentation of a new patented method of liveness detection. Subsequently a new methodology for semantic conformance testing developed for the ongoing Amendment No. 2 to the ISO/IEC 29109-2 standard to increase security and interoperability of fingerprint templates is discussed in detail. This book should be useful for anyone who may be considering securing using biometric system, especially fingerprints.