Biometrics to Enhance Smartcard Security

A novel protocol is proposed to address the problem of user authentication to smartcards using devices that are currently inexpensive. The protocol emulates expensive Match On Card (MOC) smartcards, which can compute a biometric match, by cheap Template on Card (TOC) smartcards, which only store a biometric template. The actual match is delegated to an extension of the cryptographic module running on the card host, which is called Cryptoki according to the PKCS#11[9] standard. Compliance to such a standard increases the portability of the protocol. Informal reasoning confirms the protocol strenghts, though its formal verification in terms of established equational techniques appears to be at hand.