Re: [xcbf] [Fwd:I-DACTION:draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt]

[John Larmouth <j.larmouth@salford.ac.uk>]

This is quite interesting!  He admits it is not possible yet!  But if
biometric data gets used to automatically generate your private key,
then quite clearly use of such data in protocol exchanges to recover
certificates from a database absolutely requires the data to be
encrypted, and probably in fact prevents such use.

So we have two very much opposed architectural approaches to the use of
biometric data.

But I think this one is still fraught with difficulties and nowhere near
reality yet. It assumes that biometric sampling is sufficiently
consistent that repeated samples will generate the same large integer
value, to within a precision of plus or minus one.  That is pretty close
to cloud cuckoo land, I think.

We should not waste time on this.

John L


Phil Griffin wrote:
> 
> FYI.
> Phil
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
> Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 08:00:55 -0400
> From: Internet-Drafts@ietf.org
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>         Title           : Biometric based Digital Signature scheme
>         Author(s)       : R. Nagpal, S. Nagpal
>         Filename        : draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
>         Pages           : 6
>         Date            : 13-May-02
> 
> Digital Signatures are fast emerging as a viable information security
> solution, satiating the objectives of data integrity, entity
> authentication, privacy, non-repudiation and certification.
> The technique, as it stands today, faces the problem of the
> maintenance of the secrecy of the private key. This document provides
> a conceptual framework for the establishment of a biometric-based key
> generation scheme. In this scheme, the private key is generated each
> time a document or record requires to be signed. Such generation is
> based upon a combination of biometric traits.
> 
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-- 
   Prof John Larmouth
   Larmouth T&PDS Ltd
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