BiometricJammer: Preventing surreptitious photography of biometric information without inconveniencing users

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K12431
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Multimedia database
• Research Institution: National Institute of Informatics
• Principal Investigator: Echizen Isao 国立情報学研究所, 情報社会相関研究系, 教授 (30462188)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: コンテンツ流通・管理 / 生体情報保護 / 生体認証

Outline of Final Research Achievements

As fingerprint authentication technology becomes more advanced, it is being used in a growing range of personal devices such as PCs and smartphones. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that digital cameras can be used to capture people’s biometric information such as fingerprints remotely, leaving them at risk of illegal log-ins or identity theft. This research shows how photographs can be processed to facilitate illegal fingerprint authentication. To prevent this from happening, we also propose a method that defeats the use of surreptitious photography to replicate fingerprints from photographs while still allowing contact-based fingerprint sensors to respond normally. We have verified that an implementation of the proposed method called BiometricJammer can be worn to effectively prevent the illegal acquisition of fingerprints by surreptitious photography without inconveniencing the user or preventing the use of legitimate fingerprint authentication devices.

Free Research Field

マルチメディア・データベース