Ross granted NSF SaTC Award

Nasir Memon (New York University) and Arun Ross (Michigan State University) have been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for their project entitled "The Master Print: Investigating and Addressing Vulnerabilities in Fingerprint-based Authentication Systems". This project, funded under the Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, will investigate the vulnerabilities of fingerprint systems deployed in consumer electronics such as smartphones.

A number of consumer electronic devices, including smartphones, are beginning to incorporate fingerprint sensors for user authentication. The sensors embedded in these devices are generally very small and the resulting images are, therefore, limited in size. To compensate for the limited size, these devices often acquire multiple partial impressions (templates) of a single finger during enrollment to ensure that at least one of them will successfully match with the image obtained from the user during authentication. In some cases, the user may be allowed to enroll multiple fingers, and all the templates pertaining to multiple fingers are typically associated with the same identity (i.e., one user). Thus, a user is successfully authenticated when the partial fingerprint obtained during authentication matches with any one of the stored templates. This project will develop methods to understand the vulnerability and enhance the integrity of such systems.

(Date Posted: 2016-09-25)