Very much agree. But just reading your note made me
think about password based encryption. There's an
RSA standard for this and it is commonly used to
protect a private key stored on a non secure device
such as a home PC.
Strikes me that a biometric based encryption might
in the future be used to either augment or replace
the purely password based method with a biometric.
But low on my list of things to do ;-)
Phil
John Larmouth wrote:
>
> This is quite interesting! He admits it is not possible yet! But if
> biometric data gets used to automatically generate your private key,
> then quite clearly use of such data in protocol exchanges to recover
> certificates from a database absolutely requires the data to be
> encrypted, and probably in fact prevents such use.
>
> So we have two very much opposed architectural approaches to the use of
> biometric data.
>
> But I think this one is still fraught with difficulties and nowhere near
> reality yet. It assumes that biometric sampling is sufficiently
> consistent that repeated samples will generate the same large integer
> value, to within a precision of plus or minus one. That is pretty close
> to cloud cuckoo land, I think.
>
> We should not waste time on this.
>
> John L
>
> Phil Griffin wrote:
> >
> > FYI.
> > Phil
> >
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
> > Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 08:00:55 -0400
> > From:
> > Reply-To:
> > To: IETF-Announce: ;
> >
> > --NextPart
> >
> > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
> > directories.
> >
> > Title : Biometric based Digital Signature scheme
> > Author(s) : R. Nagpal, S. Nagpal
> > Filename : draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
> > Pages : 6
> > Date : 13-May-02
> >
> > Digital Signatures are fast emerging as a viable information security
> > solution, satiating the objectives of data integrity, entity
> > authentication, privacy, non-repudiation and certification.
> > The technique, as it stands today, faces the problem of the
> > maintenance of the secrecy of the private key. This document provides
> > a conceptual framework for the establishment of a biometric-based key
> > generation scheme. In this scheme, the private key is generated each
> > time a document or record requires to be signed. Such generation is
> > based upon a combination of biometric traits.
> >
> > A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
> > http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
> >
> > To remove yourself from the IETF Announcement list, send a message to
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> >
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> > Content-Type: text/plain
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> >
> > ENCODING mime
> > FILE /internet-drafts/draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt
> >
> > --OtherAccess
> > Content-Type: Message/External-body;
> > name="draft-nagpal-biometric-digital-signature-00.txt";
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> > access-type="anon-ftp";
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> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain
> > Content-ID: <>
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> > --OtherAccess--
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> >
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> --
> Prof John Larmouth
> Larmouth T&PDS Ltd
> (Training and Protocol Development Services)
> 1 Blueberry Road
> Bowdon
> Cheshire WA14 3LS Tel: +44 161 928 1605
> England Fax: +44 161 928 8069
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