ISSN: 2229-6093

Dr.R.Seshadri,T.Raghu Trivedi, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (1), 183-187

Efficient Cryptographic Key Generation using Biometrics

1. Dr.R.Seshadri Director University Computer Center Sri Venkateswara University,Tirupati Email: ravalaseshadri@gmail.com 2. T.Raghu Trivedi Research Scholar, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Email: Tamirisa_t1@yahoo.com

Abstract
Biometrics gives a lot of methods in high-secure applications while using natural, user-friendly and fast authentication. Cryptography is intended to ensure the secrecy and authenticity of message. The cryptographic key will be long, so it is difficult to remember, protecting the confidentiality of the cryptographic keys is one of the significant issues to be deal with. This can be efficiently solved by the integration of biometrics with cryptography. Conventional techniques depend on biometric features like face, fingerprint, hand geometry, iris, signature, keystroke, voice and the like for the extraction of key. Instead of storing key we will generate the key dynamically with the help of biometrics. Here we will use Finger print to generate key, which is safe and fast. This key can be used for any type of cryptography. Key words: Cryptography, Minutiae points, ROI, Morphological operation, Histogram Equalization

1. Introduction
Progress of communication technologies in contemporary times has resulted in huge quantities of digital data in the publicly shared media. This leads to the drastic development of cryptographic techniques. Cryptography is considered to be one of the fundamental building blocks of computer security [1]. Data can be encoded with the aid of cryptographic techniques in order to ensure that it appears unintelligible to the public or third party and applications; Cryptography and biometrics are merged in biometric cryptosystem [5]. Biometric key system can be used broadly in two distinct ways 1.biometric based key generation 2.Biometric matching. Biometrics comprises methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits. In computer science, in particular, biometrics is used as a form of identity access management and access control. It is also used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance [6]. Biometric characteristics can be divided in two main classes Physiological are related to the shape of the body. Examples include, but are not limited to fingerprint, face recognition, DNA, Palm print, hand geometry, iris recognition. Behavioral are related to the behavior of a person. Examples include, but are not limited to typing rhythm, and voice. Some researchers have coined the term behaviometrics for this class of biometrics.

coherent only to the intended receivers of it i.e. data confidentiality. The widely used cryptographic techniques are DES, AES [2, 3] and public key architectures such as RSA [4] . It is nearly impossible to keep the cryptographic keys in mind because the length of pseudo-random keys is large. Typically we write down and store keys in an insecure Place; this makes the work of an attacker easy. It is possible to solve this problem with the help

of biometric. A biometric system is a standard method for identify and verification of a human being based on the personal or physical identification of characteristics. In recent years there is a rapid growth in use of biometrics for user authentication

183

Dr.R.Seshadri,T.Raghu Trivedi, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (1), 183-187

To generate cryptographic key we are using biometric finger print. The uses are Easy to use ,Cheap ,Small size, Low power, Non-intrusive ,Large database already available.Biometric cryptosystems can operate in one of the following three modes, (i) key release, (ii)key binding and (iii) key generation [7]. In the key release mode, the biometric template and the key are stored as separate entities and the key is released only if the biometric matching is successful. In the key binding mode, the key and the template are monolithically bound within a cryptographic frame work . It is computationally infeasible to decode the key or the template without any knowledge of the users biometric data. A crypto- biometric matching algorithm is used to perform authentication and key release in a single step. Here we are using Key generation mode, in which key is derived directly from the biometric data and is not store in the database. It is easy to implement a biometric cryptosystem in the key release mode, such a system is not appropriate for high security applications because it has two major vulnerabilities. Firstly, the biometric template is not secure. Template security is a critical issue in biometric systems because stolen templates cannot be revoked. Secondly, since authentication and key release are decoupled, it is possible to override the biometric matcher using a Trojan horse program. Biometric cryptosystems that work in the key binding/generation modes are more secure but difficult to implement due to large intra-class variations in biometric data, i.e., samples of the same biometric trait of a user obtained over a period of time can differ substantially.

fields. In such systems, while cryptography provides high and adjustable security levels, biometrics brings in non-repudiation and eliminates the need to remember passwords or to carry tokens etc. In biometric cryptosystems, a cryptographic key is generated from the biometric template of a user stored in the database in such a way that the key cannot be revealed without a successful biometric authentication. We are using fingerprint patterns because it is stable throughout persons life time.

Principals of finger print biometrics

A fingerprint is made of a number of ridges and valleys on the surface of the finger. Ridges are the upper skin layer segments of the finger and valleys are the lower segments. The ridges form so-called minutia points: ridge endings (where a ridge end) and ridge bifurcations (where a ridge splits in two). Many types of minutiae exist, including dots (very small ridges), islands (ridges slightly longer than dots, occupying a middle space between two temporarily divergent ridges), ponds or lakes (empty spaces between two temporarily divergent ridges), spurs (a notch protruding from a ridge), bridges (small ridges joining two longer adjacent ridges), and crossovers (two ridges which cross each other)[8].

Fig1.finger print image

2. Bio cryptosystem
A biometrics system considers the personal or physical identification of characteristics for the identity, verification of a human being. The functions of biometric systems are determining, measuring and codification of the unique characteristics of individuals with one already recorded. In recent years there has been rapid growth in the use of biometrics for user authentication applications because biometric based Authentication provides several benefits over knowledge and possessionbased methods. General biometric systems are as shown above. Uniqueness in humans biometric is a scale of the variations or differences in the biometric model among the worldwide population. Biometric cryptosystems [9] combine cryptography and biometrics to benefit from the strengths of both

3. Cryptographic key generation from finger print

We have selected fingerprint as the biometrics feature for generating cryptographic key. We have extracted minutiae points from the fingerprint and used that point set for generating cryptographic key.

Finger Print Image preprocessing Minutiae point Key Generation Extraction

Fig2: Steps in Key generation
184

Dr.R.Seshadri,T.Raghu Trivedi, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (1), 183-187

3.1 Image preprocessing

For image preprocessing Histogram Equalization and Filters are used to enhance the image. Binarisation is applied on fingerprint image. Then Morphological operation is used to extract Region of Interest.

(a)Histogram equalization:
Histogram equalization increases the contrast of images, especially when usable data of the image represented by close contrast values. Perceptional information of the image is increased through Histogram equalization. It permits pixel value to expand. The used Fingerprint image use bimodal type. Histogram equalization converts range from 0 to 255 which will enhance visualization effect [11].

Fig4: Finger print before and after binarization

(b)Morphological Operation
While point and neighborhood operations are generally designed to alter the look or appearance of an image for visual considerations, morphological operations are used to understand the structure or form of an image. This usually means identifying objects or boundaries within an image. There are three primary morphological functions: erosion, dilation, and hit-or-miss. Others are special cases of these primary operations or are cascaded applications of them. Morphological operations are usually performed on binary images where the pixel values are either 0 or 1. For simplicity, we will refer to pixels as 0 or 1, and will show a value of zero as black and a value of 1 as white. While most morphological operations focus on binary images The result of this approach is tightly bounded region just containing the bounded inner area. Binary morphological operators are applied on binarised fingerprint image. The unnecessary spurs, bridges, line breaks are removed by these operators. Different operators applied are clean, HBreak, Spur [8]. Thinning process is performed to reduce thickness of lines. Thinning is a morphological operation that is used to remove selected foreground pixels from binary images, somewhat like erosion or opening. It can be used for several applications, but is particularly useful for skeletonisation. In this mode it is commonly used to tidy up the output of edge detectors by reducing all lines to single pixel thickness. Thinning is normally only applied to binary images, and produces another binary image as output.

Fig3: Sample Finger Print before and Histogram Equalization

After

Median Filter is non linear, digital filter methodology employed to eliminate noise from image or other signals. The values present in window are arranged into numeric order the median value, the sample in the center of the window is chosen as output. Oldest sample is abandoned, new sample is obtained and calculations are redone.

3.2 Region of Interest

The steps in this Morphological operation are Binarization and

(a)Binarization
All minutiae extraction algorithms function on binary images where there are only two levels of interest: the black pixels that denote ridges, and the white pixels that denote valleys. Binarization is the process that translates a grey level image into a binary image. This enhances the contrast between the ridges and valleys in a fingerprint image, and consequently makes it possible the extraction of minutiae. Hence Binarization process involves analyzing grey level values of each pixel, if values is greater than the global threshold set binary value as 1 else 0.

185

Dr.R.Seshadri,T.Raghu Trivedi, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (1), 183-187

Step4: Sort the Minutiae points and Store in an array A Step5: value= KL / Np Vector=KL % Np Step6: For i=1 to value For j=1 to Sp Read point X from Array A and Check the point whether it is above or bellow the line L. If it is above the line or on the line put value as 0 else value is 1.Store them in array K. Final key=Append the key vector of length vector to value of K

Fig5: Morphological operation

3.3. Minutiae Points Extraction

Thinning eliminates the redundant pixels of ridges till the ridges are just one pixel wide. Ridge thinning algorithm is applied and in each scan of full fingerprint image, the algorithm marks down redundant pixels in each small window and finally removes all those marked pixels after several scans. After fingerprint ridge thinning minutiae points are marked easily.

4. Conclusion
Progress of communication technologies has resulted transfer of the digital data in huge quantities in the publicly shared media. Cryptography provides security to that data. We need Cryptographic key for this purpose. Cryptographic keys are long so it is difficult to remember them, storing them in a data base may be insecure. Hence we proposed a method for generation of cryptographic key which is generated using biometrics. Here we used fingerprint patterns, which are stable through out persons lifetime. The key is derived directly from the biometric data and is not stored in the database. Since it creates more complexity to crack or guess the crypto keys. This approach has reduced the complicated sequence of the operation to generate crypto keys as in the traditional cryptography system.

References
Fig6: Minutiae point extraction 1]. Sunil V. K. Gaddam 1 and Manohar Lal 2,Effecient Cancellable Biometric Key Generation Scheme for Cryptography International Journal of Network Security, Vol.11, No.2, PP.57{65, Sep. 2010 [2].Advanced Encryption Standard. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced Encryption Standard) [3].AES Encryption information. (http://www.bitzipper.com/aes-encryption.html) [4] A. J. Menezes, P. C. V. Oorschot, and S. A.Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRCPress, pp. 180, 1997 [5]. U. Uludag, S. Pankanti, S. Prabhakar, and A. K.Jain, \Biometric cryptosystems: Issues and challenges," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 92, pp. 948-960, 2004. [6]Biometrics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics#cite_note6)

Matrix & key generation:

The key generation algorithm is as follows Extracted minutiae points co-ordinates maintained in a vector Mp- Minutiae points set Sp - Size of Mp KL=key length Kv -Key Vector Lk -Length of key vector Z - (X, Y) co-ordinate of a minutiae point Step1: Read the Minutiae points Step2: Find the point H with highest x+y Step3: Draw a line from origin (0, 0) to the H and call it as L

are

186

Dr.R.Seshadri,T.Raghu Trivedi, Int. J. Comp. Tech. Appl., Vol 2 (1), 183-187

[7] P.Arul, Dr.A.Shanmugam Generate a Key For AES Using Biometric For VOIP Network Security Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology 2009.107-112. [8] Principles of fingerprint ( http://www.biometricnewsportal.com/fingerprint_bio metrics.asp) [9]. Umut Uludag, Sharath Pankanti, Salil Prabhakar, Anil K.Jain Biometric Cryptosystems Issues and ChallengesProceedings of the IEEE 2004. [10]. Jain, A.K.; Prabhakar, S.; Hong, L.; Pankanti, S., "Filterbank-based fingerprint matching",IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 9, no. 5, pp: 846-859, May 2000, Doi:10.1109/83.841531.

Authors Profile

Dr.R.Seshadri was born in Andhra Pradesh, India, in 1959. He received his B.Tech degree from Nagarjuna University in 1981. He completed his Masters degree in Control System Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore in 1984. He was awarded with PhD from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati in 1998. He is currently Director, Computer Center, S.V.University,Tirupati, India. He published number of papers in national and international journals.

Mr.T.RaghuTrivedi received MCA degree from Andhra University,Vizag He received his M.Tech in Computer Science from Nagarjuna University.He is a research scholar in S.V.University,Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh.

187