Biometric Attribute

Full Title or Meme

Biometrics are literally the measures of the biologic phenotype of a User.

Context

• Biometric Attributes are taken to be exclusively the measure of human characteristics like fingerprint, facial and behavior patterns.
• The human characteristics are another factor that can be a part of Multi-factor Authentication.
• So the human characteristics can be considered to be a Credential.
• The measurements of the characteristic are compared against a template of the characteristics using some Assurance level to produce a Validated claim.

Problems

• False positives typically come from either relaxed testing, environmental noise or obsolete technology.
• False negatives infuriate Users which is why false positives are tolerated.
• Attacks against the sensor capabilities. Various movie and television plots have shown the attacks like taking someone's eyeball, or using a thin-film replica of a finger print to complete an Authentication which Authorizes access.
• Attacks against the template store. Access to the Authentication data store can often be the simplest attack as it is based on known techniques.
• Biometric Attributes attached to official documents may inadvertently become Biometric Identifiers which invade the user's privacy. See the wiki page Biometric Identifier for user cases where that has damaged a user's life.

Solutions

• ISO 30107-3:2017 describes testing of Biometric Attribute presentations.
• The first Level 1 rating in the NIST/NVLAP-certified iBeta Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) Certification test was granted on (2018-09-23) to facetec
• ujitsu Proposes Windows Hello Palm Vein Authentication in the Workplace 2018-02-12