Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2004/176

A Biometric Identity Based Signature Scheme

Andrew Burnett and Adam Duffy and Tom Dowling

Abstract: We describe an identity based signature scheme that uses biometric information to construct the public key. Such a scheme would be beneficial in a legal dispute over whether a contract had been signed or not by a user. A biometric reading provided by the alleged signer would be enough to verify the signature. We make use of Fuzzy extractors to generate a key string from a biometric measurement. We use this biometric based key string and an elliptic curve point embedding technique to create the public key and corresponding private key. We then make use of a pairing based signature scheme to perform signing and verification with these keys. We describe a possible attack on this system and suggest ways to combat it. Finally we describe how such a biometric signature scheme can be developed by reusing existing components in our Java Identity Based Encryption implementation. The design allows traditional as well as biometric identity based signatures.

Category / Keywords: public-key cryptography / identity based signature and biometrics

Date: received 22 Jul 2004, last revised 23 Jul 2004

Contact author: cryptogrp at cs may ie

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Note: typo correction

Version: 20040723:142901 (All versions of this report)

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