Sample Exercises

Chapter 7: Security
1. What are the four major types of security threats in a biometric system?
2. List the adversary attacks that can be mounted against a biometric system.
3. In what ways can insiders (administrators and legitimate users) compromise the security of a biometric system?
4. Briefly explain five key techniques that can detect spoof fingers. Discuss
their advantages and limitations.
5. Explain how a hill-climbing attack can be mounted against a biometric
system. What kind of countermeasures can be adopted to prevent such
an attack?
6. Why is leakage of biometric template information a serious security and
privacy threat? What are the three main requirements in biometric template security?
7. What are some of the common techniques that are used for securing passwords? Explain why such techniques cannot be directly applied for securing biometric templates.
8. Discuss the advantages and limitations of storing biometric templates encrypted using standard cryptographic constructs such as RSA or AES.
9. State the properties that a non-invertible transformation function must
satisfy to be useful for biometric template protection.
10. What is a biometric cryptosystem? What factors determine the trade-off
between the security and recognition performance of a biometric cryptosystem?