| Biometric methods of authentication such as fingerprints, hand geometry, face recognition, voice, retina and iris scan are being increasingly used for security purposes. However, online transactions still use traditional knowledge based, i.e., Personal Identification Number (PIN) or password for authentication. Such methods have proved ineffective over the course of time, as incidents relating to online fraud are on the rise, because more people use online services. A recent report a Trojan based attack on a premier UK bank has amounted to a 1 million dollar loss over a one month period. Traditional public key encryption based authentication have been in use over the years, but not many forays have been made in to securing network transactions using biometrics. This thesis is an effort to secure network transactions using biometrics, with the following goals: (1) Providing authentication – method to transmit biometric data over a network such that this data may be relied upon to perform authentication; (2) Proposing a security protocol which uses biometrics to secure network transactions; (3) An example implementation of the proposed protocol; (4) Describe implementation of a contactless fingerprint reader used to obtain high resolution images of the finger. |
