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 2. T.Raghu Trivedi

Director Research Scholar,
University Computer Center Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.
Sri Venkateswara University,Tirupati Email: Tamirisa_t1@yahoo.com
Email: ravalaseshadri@gmail.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 applications; Cryptography and biometrics are

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
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
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.

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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 user‟s 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.
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 possession-
based methods. General biometric systems are as
shown above. Uniqueness in human‟s 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
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 person‟s 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
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
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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].
Fig3: Sample Finger Print before and After
Histogram Equalization
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 are Binarization and
Morphological operation
(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.
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.
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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.
Fig6: Minutiae point extraction
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
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
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 person‟s
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
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2,”Effecient Cancellable Biometric Key Generation
Scheme for Cryptography” International Journal of
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2010
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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced Encryption
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[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
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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics#cite_note-
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[7] P.Arul, Dr.A.Shanmugam “Generate a Key For

AES Using Biometric For VOIP Network Security”
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[8] Principles of fingerprint (

http://www.biometricnewsportal.com/fingerprint_bio
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Prabhakar, Anil K.Jain “Biometric Cryptosystems
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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.

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