A False Rejection Oriented Threat Model for the Design of Biometric Authentication Systems

For applications like Terrorist Watch Lists and Smart Guns, a false rejection is more critical than a false acceptance. In this paper a new threat model focusing on false rejections is presented, and the “standard” architecture of a biometric system is extended by adding components like crypto, audit logging, power, and environment to increase the analytic power of the threat model. Our threat model gives new insight into false rejection attacks, emphasizing the role of an external attacker. The threat model is intended to be used during the design of a system.