Initially, digital biometric data processing systems were used primarily by government agencies and special services (police, customs, etc.). However, the rapid evolution of information technology has made biometric systems accessible for ‘civil’ use. They are increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives, augmenting and replacing traditional authentication methods, such as those based on logins and passwords. Indeed, identifying people using characteristics that are unique to each person, such as fingerprints, voices, facial shapes or their distinctive eye structure, seems an obvious and incredibly convenient method.
Today, biometric authentication is used to access government and commercial offices, industrial automation systems, corporate and personal laptops and mobile phones. Both the number and the variety of applications for these technologies continues to grow.
Unfortunately, like many other technologies that have been rapidly evolving lately, biometric authentication systems have proved to have significant drawbacks. The key shortcomings of biometric authentication technologies have to do with information security issues.
In this report, we will discuss the numerous information security issues affecting biometric authentication systems and present the results of our own research, to provide additional information for a more objective evaluation of risks associated with using existing biometric authentication system implementations.
Biometric data processing and storage
The concept of biometric data as a unique personal identifier that cannot be forged is fundamentally wrong and can foster a false sense of security.
Firstly, the accuracy of biometric data recognition by authentication systems, although relatively high, can still be insufficient for many applications. After all, such recognition is not about simply calculating whether two hash sums are equal or not, as in the case of password-based authentication. Biometric systems usually have a greater-than-zero probability of false-negative and false-positive results.
Secondly,
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