Secure Multimodal Authentication Using Watermarking

Abstract

As malicious attacks greatly threaten the security and reliability of biometric systems, Authentication of biometric data is very important. In this paper Two-stage authentication based on watermarking is proposed to address this problem. The facial features of an individual embed into a fingerprint image which works as data credibility token and secondary authentication source. At the first stage of authentication, the credibility token of input data is established by checking the validness of extracting patterns. Due to the specific characteristics of face watermarks, the face detection based classification schemes are applied for reliable watermark verification instead of conventional correlation based watermark detection. If token authentication is successful, the face patterns can further serve as supplemental identity information to facilitate sub sequential biometric authentication. In this framework, one critical issue is to guarantee the robustness and capacity of watermark while preserving the discriminating features of host fingerprints. Hence a wavelet quantization based watermarking and LSB watermarking approach is proposed to adaptively distribute watermark energy on significant DWT coefficients of fingerprint images.