Attacks on facial biometrics systems: an overview

Purpose The authors argue that the current studies about malicious insiders confuse the fact that malicious attacks belong to two different categories, namely, those that launch instrumental attacks and expressive attacks. The authors collect malicious insider data from publicly available sources and use text-mining techniques to analyze the association between malicious insiders’ characteristics and the different types of attack. Design/methodology/approach The authors investigated the relationship between personality characteristics and different types of malicious attacks. For the personality characteristics, the authors use the same method as Liang et al. (2016), which extracted these characteristics based on a keyword-characteristic dictionary. For different types of malicious attacks, two raters rated each case based on criteria modified from criminology research to determine the degree of expressiveness and instrumentality. Findings The results show that malicious insiders who are manipulative or seeking personal gain tend to carry out instrumental attacks. Malicious insiders who are arrogant tend to conduct expressive attacks. Research limitations/implications This study uses third party articles to identify the personality characteristics of known malicious insiders. As such, not all personality characteristics may have been reported. Data availability was an issue. Practical implications Understanding if different personality characteristics lead different types of attacks can help managers identify employees who exhibit them and mitigate an attack before it occurs. Social implications Malicious insider attacks can have devastating results on businesses and employees. Help to identify potential malicious insiders before they act, may prevent undue harm. Originality/value This study used 132 cases of none malicious insiders to examine their attack objectives. No other study that the authors know of used that many cases.

Traditional identity verification of students based on the human proctoring approach can cause a scam identity verification and ineffective processing time, particularly among vast groups of students. Most student identification cards outdated personal information. Several biometric recognition approaches have been proposed to strengthen students’ identity verification. Most educational adoption technologies struggle with evaluation and validation techniques to ensure that biometric recognition systems are unsuitable for utilization and implementation for student identity verification. This study presents the internet of things to develop flexible biometric recognition systems and an approach to assess the quality of biometric systems for educational use by investigating the effectiveness of identity verification of various biometric recognition technologies compared to the traditional verification method. The unimodal, multimodal, and semi-multimodal biometric technologies were tested using the developed internet of things-base biometric recognition systems examined by applying the proposed quality metrics of scoring factors based on accuracy, error rate, processing time, and cost. Hundreds of undergraduate exam takers were a sample group. Key findings indicate that the designed and presented systems suitably attain identity verification of exam students using a unimodal biometric. The unimodal facial biometric system promises excellent support. A unimodal fingerprint biometric system ensures second excellent aid for student identity verification. However, multimodal and semi-multimodal biometric systems provide better accuracy with fewer handling times and higher costs. This study contributes significantly to the knowledge of utilizing biometric recognition for identity verification in smart educational applications.

A biometric system is an amalgamation of algorithms that uses an individual’s unique biological data innate physical features (fingerprints, retina, face, ears, etc.) or behavioural features (signature, voice, keystroke dynamics, etc.) or both to authenticate the individual. This essentially makes a biometric system function as a pattern recognition system that helps an individual in any kind of adversarial environment. Hence, like any conventional authentication system, it is vulnerable to the attacks of malicious adversaries that try to manipulate the data and thus decline the security of the system by compromising its robustness. These possible attacks have not been considered while developing most biometric authentication systems. Our work describes multimodal biometrics, its feature extraction methods, research challenges and focuses on the major security issues in both unimodal and multimodal biometric systems. This paper summarizes some robust multimodal systems, their countermeasures and algorithms that have been devised to tackle these security challenges.KeywordsBiometricsMultimodal biometricsBiometric fusionSecurityAttacksCountermeasuresEncryption

In recent years, biometric, or "who you are," authentication has grown rapidly in acceptance and use. Biometric authentication offers users the convenience of not having to carry a password, PIN, smartcard, etc. Instead, users will use their inherent biometric traits for authentication and, as a result, risk their biometric information being stolen. The security of users' biometric information is of critical importance within a biometric authentication scheme as compromised data can reveal sensitive information: race, gender, illness, etc. A cancellable biometric scheme, the "BioCapsule" scheme, proposed by researchers from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, aims to mask users' biometric information and preserve users' privacy. The BioCapsule scheme can be easily embedded into existing biometric authentication systems, and it has been shown to preserve user-privacy, be resistant to several types of attacks, and have minimal effects on biometric authentication system accuracy. In this research we present a facial authentication system which employs several cutting-edge techniques. We tested our proposed system on several face databases, both with and without the BioCapsule scheme being embedded into our system. By comparing our results, we quantify the effects the BioCapsule scheme, and its security benefits, have on the accuracy of our facial authentication system.

A linear convolution-based cancelable fingerprint biometric authentication system

Score normalization applied to adaptive biometric systems

This research paper aims to contribute to the field of biometric attendance systems. Biometric system which uses unique biological traits like fingerprints for identification and authentication, offers several benefits over traditional authentication methods like passwords or ID cards. The benefits of using biometric system can be enhanced security, convenience and high efficiency, reduced risk of fraud, cost-effective in long run, accountability, scalability, multi-factor authentication, etc. In most of the organizations or institutes attendance is taken by the traditional methods like register book but this method takes time then attendance from these registers is uploaded to server for further attendance report of students. To withstand this problem, we have proposed an IoT based multipurpose biometric authentication system. We have developed a portable system that includes fingerprint sensors to recognize the fingerprint of various students and show the details of the students whose fingerprints have been scanned. The data from the fingerprint scanner is sent to the Raspberry PI server using Wi-Fi. We also have also designed a user interface for students and faculty to view and manage the students and their attendance. The attendance report can be exported to excel file any time faculty want the report. The biometric system provides 80% efficiency over the regular attendance methods.

We would like to outline our opinions about the usability of biometric authentication systems. We outline the position of biometrics in the current field of computer security in the first section of our paper. The second chapter introduces a more systematic view of the process of biometric authentication — a layer model (of the biometric authentication process). The third section discusses the advantages and disadvantages of biometric authentication systems. We also propose a classification of biometric systems that would allow us to compare the biometrics systems reasonably, along similar lines to Common Criteria [1] or FIPS 140–1/2 [4]. We conclude this paper with some suggestions where we would suggest to use biometric systems and where not.

This paper investigates the potential of gait-based authentication for securing virtual environments, specifically within the Metaverse. With the growing need for reliable and secure identity verification in virtual spaces, traditional authentication methods, such as passwords or PINs, have proven insufficient. In contrast, biometric authentication systems, including gait analysis, provide a more secure and user-friendly alternative by leveraging unique physiological and behavioral traits for identity verification. This research applies machine learning algorithms—Random Forest and Support Vector Machine (SVM)—to gait data for distinguishing between authentic users and imposters. The dataset consists of 1,000 simulated gait samples with 16 features, such as stride length, step frequency, joint angles, and ground reaction forces (GRF). After performing exploratory data analysis (EDA), including feature distribution visualization and correlation analysis, two models were trained on the data. The Random Forest model outperformed the SVM model, achieving an accuracy of 56% and a recall of 76%, indicating its effectiveness in identifying authentic users. Despite the promising results, both models showed only marginal improvement over random guessing, highlighting the need for further optimization. This study contributes to the growing body of research on gait-based biometric systems by demonstrating their potential as a viable method for identity verification in virtual environments. It also identifies the most important gait features, such as step frequency, cadence variability, and knee joint angle, that significantly contribute to the classification process. Future research should explore advanced deep learning techniques and the integration of multimodal biometric systems to enhance the performance and reliability of gait-based authentication.

There are different types of adversarial attacks and defences for machine learning algorithms which makes assessing the robustness of an algorithm a daunting task. Moreover, there is an intrinsic bias in these adversarial attacks and defences to make matters worse. Here, we organise the problems faced: a) Model Dependence, b) Insufficient Evaluation, c) False Adversarial Samples, and d) Perturbation Dependent Results. Based on this, we propose a model agnostic adversarial robustness assessment method based on L0 and L∞ distance-based norms and the concept of robustness levels to tackle the problems. We validate our robustness assessment on several neural network architectures (WideResNet, ResNet, AllConv, DenseNet, NIN, LeNet and CapsNet) and adversarial defences for image classification problem. The proposed robustness assessment reveals that the robustness may vary significantly depending on the metric used (i.e., L0 or L∞). Hence, the duality should be taken into account for a correct evaluation. Moreover, a mathematical derivation and a counter-example suggest that L1 and L2 metrics alone are not sufficient to avoid spurious adversarial samples. Interestingly, the threshold attack of the proposed assessment is a novel L∞ black-box adversarial method which requires even more minor perturbation than the One-Pixel Attack (only 12% of One-Pixel Attack’s amount of perturbation) to achieve similar results. We further show that all current networks and defences are vulnerable at all levels of robustness, suggesting that current networks and defences are only effective against a few attacks keeping the models vulnerable to different types of attacks.

Intrusion detection System forms a vital component of internet security. To keep pace with the growing trends, there is a critical need to replace single layer detection technology with multi layer detection. Different types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks thwart authorized users from gaining access to the networks and we tried to detect as well as alleviate some of those attacks. In this paper, we have proposed a novel cross layer intrusion detection architecture to discover the malicious nodes and different types of DoS attacks by exploiting the information available across different layers of protocol stack in order to improve the accuracy of detection. We have used cooperative anomaly intrusion detection with data mining technique to enhance the proposed architecture. We have implemented fixed width clustering algorithm for efficient detection of the anomalies in the MANET traffic and also generated different types of attacks in the network. The simulation of the proposed architecture is performed in OPNET simulator and we got the result as we expected.

A robust embedded biometric authentication system based on fingerprint and chaotic encryption

The need for fool proof authentication procedures away from traditional authentication mechanisms like passwords, security PINS has led to the advent of biometric authentication in information systems. Biometric data extracted from physiological features of a person including but not limited to fingerprints, palm prints, face or retina for purpose of verification & identification is saved as biometric templates. The inception of biometrics in access control systems has not been without its own hitches & like other systems it has its fair share of challenges. Biometric fingerprints being the most mature of all biometric spheres are the most widely adopted biometric authentication systems. Biometric systems effectiveness lies on how secure they are at preventing inadvertent disclosure of biometric templates in an information system’s archive. This however has not been the case as biometric templates have been fraudulently accessed to gain unauthorized access in identification and verification systems. In order to achieve strong and secure biometric systems, biometric systems developers need to build biometric systems that properly secure biometric templates. Several biometric template protection schemes and approaches have been proposed and used to safeguard stored biometric templates. Despite there being various biometric template protection schemes and approaches in existence, none of them has provided the most authentic, reliable, efficient and deterrent means to totally secure biometric fingerprint templates. This research sought to establish status of the current biometric template protection techniques and methods by conducting a survey and analyzing data gathered from a sample of seventy-eight (78) respondents. We will report these results and give our conclusion based on findings of the survey in this paper.

It is an undeniable fact that biometric recognition systems are susceptible to different software-related or template attacks at different vulnerable points in the biometric authentication system. However, these attacks are frequently overlooked, implying one of two possibilities: either researchers and biometric stakeholders have forgotten or simply ignored the consequences of these attacks, or they are unaware of some of these threats. Meanwhile, if biometric systems do not have the required protection, these attacks can lead to biometric system compromise and consequently the loss of sensitive personal data, which is irreplaceable and irrevocable. Therefore, considering the significance of the implications posed by these threats, researchers and biometric stakeholders have, over the last two decades, proposed different methods to mitigate some of the attacks, while a large number of the existing attacks are left unattended to. Hence, we deemed it paramount to bring this to the attention of the research community. This article is an effort to emphasize the implications of these attacks, exploit the threat approach based on attackers’ knowledge, and consolidate them into a single, thorough, and comprehensive review together with recent state-of-the-art protection mechanisms that are put forward to mitigate these threats. Moreover, a comparative performance analysis of these protection mechanisms and other possible countermeasures to the attacks is given. It is expected that this survey will, on the one hand, be a wakeup call to the biometric template protection research community, thus drawing their attention to the task at hand. On the other hand, an awareness to the ordinary users and biometric stakeholders on the risks posed by these threats.

In a present-day world there are different types of attacks being launched on computing devices. World is experiencing more and more cyber-attacks and types of attacks are also increasing. For example, an IoT device in a home network can act as a botnet attacking other devices or there could be man in the middle attack. As time goes by more and more devices are being connected within any given network. All these devices will be vulnerable to attacks if any one of the devices is compromised within the network. This complicates Intrusion Detection in any given network. Manual detection and intervention is nearly impossible. Hence it is quintessential to detect different types of attacks with more confidence with less computation complexity and time. A lot of research work has already been done in this area where the attacks have been studied separately. In this paper we focus on detecting intrusions including IoT botnet attacks and other types of network attacks. To achieve this, we build a multiclass classification using supervised learning models along with the dimensionality reduction technique. Numerous studies on ML-based IDS have been using KDD or the upgraded versions of KDD dataset. In this study we used a new dataset, IoT network Intrusion Detection dataset.