Improved cancelable fingerprint templates using minutiae-based functional transform

Since Ratha et al. introduced the functional transform for cancelable fingerprint templates, a few simulation attacks to this method have been proposed. The attacks are based on the fact that the transform depends only on the predefined parameters. That is, the attacker may fully simulate the transform and partially invert it if the parameters are available. Although an original template is transformed using different parameters for different systems, even the compromise of only one of these systems may reveal the original template, which may be a serious potential threat from a practical viewpoint. In this paper, we propose an improved functional transform, whose parameters are decided by the original template, as well as predefined user-specific keys. Because the information on the original template will not be available to the attacker even when a system is compromised, the proposed method significantly improves the security of the original template by preventing the attacker from reconstructing the transform. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.