SBBSCS: SHA based biometric smartcard security

Smartcards are being used as a form of identification and authentication. One major problem with smartcards, however, is the possibility of loss or theft. Current options for securing smartcards against unauthorized use are primarily restricted to passwords. Passwords are easy enough for others to steal so that they do not offer sufficient protection. This has promoted interest in biometric identification methods, including iris recognition. The iris is, due to its unique biological properties, exceptionally suited for identification. It is protected from the environment, stable over time, unique in shape and contains a high amount of discriminating information. This paper proposes a method to integrate iris recognition with the smart card to develop a high security access environment. An iris recognition system and smart card programming circuit with its software have been designed. Template on card (TOC) category has been employed. The extracted iris features stored the form of hash in smartcard are compared against the hash of data acquired from a camera or database for authentication. Results show that the SHA secure hash algorithm has superior performance in terms of security, accuracy and consistency compared with other technology (MD5).