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

[Phil Griffin <phil.griffin@asn-1.com>]

Very much agree. But just reading your note made me
think about password based encryption. There's an
RSA standard for this and it is commonly used to
protect a private key stored on a non secure device
such as a home PC. 

Strikes me that a biometric based encryption might
in the future be used to either augment or replace 
the purely password based method with a biometric.

But low on my list of things to do ;-)

Phil


John Larmouth wrote:
> 
> 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
> > Reply-To: Internet-Drafts@ietf.org
> > To: IETF-Announce: ;
> >
> > --NextPart
> >
> > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
> > directories.
> >
> >         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.
> >
> > A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
> > http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
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> --
>    Prof John Larmouth
>    Larmouth T&PDS Ltd
>    (Training and Protocol Development Services)
>    1 Blueberry Road
>    Bowdon                               j.larmouth@salford.ac.uk
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>    England                              Fax: +44 161 928 8069
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