Fuzzy Extractors: How to Generate Strong Keys from Biometrics and Other Noisy Data

We provide formal definitions and efficient secure techniques for - turning biometric information into keys usable for any cryptographic application, and - reliably and securely authenticating biometric data. Our techniques apply not just to biometric information, but to any keying material that, unlike traditional cryptographic keys, is (1) not reproducible precisely and (2) not distributed uniformly. We propose two primitives: a fuzzy extractor extracts nearly uniform randomness R from its biometric input; the extraction is error-tolerant in the sense that R will be the same even if the input changes, as long as it remains reasonably close to the original. Thus, R can be used as a key in any cryptographic application. A secure sketch produces public information about its biometric input w that does not reveal w, and yet allows exact recovery of w given another value that is close to w. Thus, it can be used to reliably reproduce error-prone biometric inputs without incurring the security risk inherent in storing them. In addition to formally introducing our new primitives, we provide nearly optimal constructions of both primitives for various measures of closeness of input data, such as Hamming distance, edit distance, and set difference.