Affiliations: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, University of
Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 6 – 90128 - Palermo, Italy. E-mails:
{conti, militello, sorbello}@unipa.it | Dipartimento di Biotecnologie Mediche e Medicina
Legale, University of Palermo, Via del Vespro, 129 – 90127 - Palermo, Italy.
E-mail: vitabile@unipa.it
Abstract: The development and the diffusion of distributed systems, directly
connected to recent communication technologies, move people towards the era of
mobile and ubiquitous systems. Distributed systems make merchant-customer
relationships closer and more flexible, using reliable e-commerce technologies.
These systems and environments need many distributed access points, for the
creation and management of secure identities and for the secure recognition of
users. Traditionally, these access points can be made possible by a software
system with a main central server. This work proposes the study and
implementation of a multimodal technique, based on biometric information, for
identity management and personal ubiquitous authentication. The multimodal
technique uses both fingerprint micro features (minutiae) and fingerprint macro
features (singularity points) for robust user authentication. To strengthen the
security level of electronic payment systems, an embedded hardware prototype
has been also created: acting as self-contained sensors, it performs the entire
authentication process on the same device, so that all critical information
(e.g. biometric data, account transactions and cryptographic keys), are
managed and stored inside the sensor, without any data transmission. The sensor
has been prototyped using the Celoxica RC203E board, achieving fast execution
time, low working frequency, and good recognition performance.
Keywords: Ubiquitous authentication, multimodal systems, mobile payment systems, biometric techniques, and embedded systems
