Biometric Transaction Authentication using Smartphones

Secure and robust authentication of users and customers is critical, as an increasing number of services from banks, health and government sectors are made available to people as online services. Recent development in the area of biometrics, e.g. biometric systems in smartphones, has contributed to higher adoption of the technology as a viable authentication factor in modern systems. In this work, we propose an approach for authenticating transactions in an online bank by using a combination of Bloom filters and error correcting codes. Firstly, protected biometric templates, using Bloom filters, are generated from faces detected in images captured using smartphones. Secondly, a key, shared between a smartphone and a bank server, is encoded using error correcting codes. The encoded key is then secured in the smartphone using the protected biometric templates. Authentication of a banking transaction is realised by unlocking the secured key with a protected biometric template that is close to the template used to lock the key. Experiments are performed on a database consisting of images and videos captured using an iPhone 6S.