ENTROPY: MINUTIAE POINTS ACROSS VARYING FORCE LEVELSAranya Kishore, Ellen Truty, Quinten Anderson, Brian Masuoka, Neil Skinner, Kyle Kingma, Kevin O’Connor, Stephen Elliott

OVERVIEW

CONCLUSION FUTURE WORKTo further this study, samples can be divided into results based on gender and age. This will show how minutiae points change over time with respect to these factors. Other future possibilities would be to create standardized software to calculate entropy points and the force applied by the user. This will make it easier to determine how secure fingerprint biometrics are. This study would show how age affects entropy over time, and how it affects biometric password security.

WHAT IS ENTROPY

EQUATING BIOMETRIC ENTROPY, COMPARING FINGERPRINTS TO PASSWORDSEQUATING BIOMETRIC ENTROPY, COMPARING FINGERPRINTS TO PASSWORDS

EXPERIMENT DESIGN

HEAT MAPS AND RESULTS - RIGHT MIDDLE

The purpose of this study was to test entropy through the location of minutiae points across the right middle finger. This data is displayed through heat maps, which are separated by force in Newtons. This experiment is a continuation of Matt Young’s Thesis : ‘EQUATING BIOMETRIC ENTROPY, COMPARING FINGERPRINTS TO PASSWORDS’.

Entropy is a form of authentication criteria that can be compared to a PIN or other token. Fingerprint entropy is measured by minutiae points and is impacted by the finger type and overall quality of the fingerprint. A high quality fingerprint is a form of identification that makes brute force attacks difficult to perform. Fingerprint entropy is important to portray the security of a fingerprint and how its complexity compares to a PIN or password.

The experiment at hand consisted of recording minutia points on a collected sample of 460 fingerprints. We collected this sample in various stages. Each stage required the individual to use a different force level on the scanner to record the fingerprint. We used five different force levels. This allowed the process to capture varying results of minutia points on a basis of how hard the individual pressed on the sensor with the right middle finger. The results were categorized by each particular finger, and then by force level. With this information, heat-maps were formed to give visual representations of the data found. Each heat map shows a count of minutia points and where they are found on each spot of the finger during different force samples.

5 NEWTONS

11 NEWTONS

7 NEWTONS

13 NEWTONS

9 NEWTONS

The elevated curves show a higher consistency of minutiae points. The curves on these maps show the probability of a minutiae point occurring in that certain area.

The heat maps show that with little force applied, (5 Newtons) the yield of minutiae points is considerably less than when a stronger force is applied. The minutiae points recorded show us that they continue to stay centralized on the fingerprint regardless of force applied. This information is important in the study of entropy because it portrays the security of a fingerprint with different force levels applied. This is directly related to the security of a fingerprint and its complexity compared to a PIN or password.