Topic: generation of cryptographic private keys from personal biometrics (Read 442 times)

In our digital age all of our personal documents (national id, passport, etc) have chip containing all of our bio-metrics.
Any malicious party that may have access to national databases would thus be able to harvest innumerable identities for their attempts to replicate everything (even your fingerprints) using advanced 3D printers.

IMHO there is no such thing as a perfectly safe solution to generating private keys, best bet that we can currently rely on is still some sort of trusted hardware.

I see biometrics can be used as a source of entropy/seed while generating keys. However, it should never be deterministic. It just too "fuzzy" for that.

Most of biometrics does not produce fixed data blob every time you run it, instead recognition system "trained' and produces probabilistic classifier (Sift, HAAR, AAM/ASM in computer vision/face recognition). Classifier being applied to your blob generated by biometrics tells you probability - like 0.87. You set the threshold what should be considered "true" and what "false".

I agree with your opinion of a perfect economy will have a free and uniform currency, Two important features of Bitcoin that make Bitcoin so great. I also believe that the currency should be inherited individually for free, to eliminate all "taxes" on trade. These coins should be distributed evenly without any central authority that "sells" the coins.
    Apparently economic development in the property sector, this is the engine of economic development. Second is the car, and the third is the infrastructure. With these three engines, we will be one of the most developed countries.
      He said the three sectors could become the engine of economic growth now in the future because it has the potential to do the same. Hope this can be a benefit for us .....

I suppose the whole idea of mining was meant to give an "air-drop" to the people. ASICs ruined that, but there are still some ASIC resistant algorithms out there.

You won't like it, but basically, KYC/AML everyone. Valid ID, Voter's style registration, Passports, Driver's License, Social Security Numbers (no one is supposed to give these out, but they do anyway)

But even with that, you'll have fake IDs and dead people claiming their airdrops. You'll have entire armies from world war 2 wanting their "fair share". Exchanges can't stop this now. Banks can't stop it. Even national elections can't stop it.

So, good luck. You can try to do a good job, but some will get through. I'm trying to do a country coin myself, my requirement would be birth certificates or some other valid national id, and maybe a police certificate. But every high ranking corrupt criminal politician has all of those anyway. You'll just have to accept that exploits are there. Technical exploits. Social exploits. Smart people. Dumb people.

My goal with this thought was to find a decentralized and non-corruptible way to air drop every individual a fixed and equal amount to create an balanced economic start for every individual. The problem with current crypto-currencies is one needs to "buy" into it with fiat capital they already have allowing the crypto to preserve their position, especially the richest 1%. A system implementing this idea of decentralized and equal distribution creates a hard stop to the need of using fiat. This allows for and pushes people to start setting it's value based off the goods/services/products they offer rather than comparing it to a fiat system, thus creating a new standard of measure of value.

The principles I believe are important. Preserving decentralization and even distribution is key to having a non-hierarchical economy.

I hadn't really given this much thought, but it's actually not a half bad concept. But instead of private keys, say public keys.


Maybe for verification of ownership of the keys, but not actually using the seed.

This way, you can generate a trillion random public keys, but you can prove actual ownership of them by providing your unique biometric.

It'd make sense for a nation to use something like this for identification purposes or digital signatures. No one should really have your biometric, and even if they did, they'd still need your private key to prove anything.

Do any of you have any ideas of any alternative ways to achieve 1 to 1 private key generation besides bio metrics?

This is why I would never, ever, use biometrics to secure anything of actual value.

Yeah, I can see this all happening. I understand the potential for exploit and the way that people treat new coins. I am still very much in the idea stage with this one. I'm looking for a way to properly enforce a decentralized distribution and ensure it goes out 1 to each individual. This requires much more think tank. I dare not start without a concrete plan of enforcement. Along the way of design prototypes can be tested, but I feel that this idea is too important to let die with a failed coin.

Depending on what is it's perceived future value, many people may want to participate in a free airdrop, if that is how distribution is going to happen.

What is actually going to happen are people dumping their free coins and others getting it for cheap, which happens with almost all other coins.

If you're thinking of a "bitcoin" airdrop, it's been done with the countless forks out there that started with BCash, BGold, BDiamond, ... now you want to do BFingerprints or something. Or some cryptos like CLAM started with snapshots of 3 different other coins (bitcoin, litecoin and doge) ...

What will also happen is that someone will hack the program and come out with multiple fingerprints / biometrics, and your coin will give all of them the same "fair amount".

I was thinking of a way to have 1 key per person that is generated to include a base balance that is more than 0. Alternative private keys can be generated for other purposes without this first key. The idea is to promote a fair and balanced economy where every individual starts out with an equal amount.

I like having thousands of keys. If you use biometrics, maybe they can also be "password protected" so they would need your face/prints as well as the password. But then people would use passwords that are as long as private keys, so ...

Those are excellent points, which is why I am looking for other's thoughts on this. Perhaps the goal can be obtained by other means besides biometrics, or compounded by secure private identification that is unique to a person. Currently private keys are randomly generated, but aren't limited. Having a limit of one key per person introduces the possibility of starting with more than a 0 balance and maintaining fairness and equality. the latest technology in secure identification can be used to achieve this.

I would say you should not try this. Your biometrics are more or less public information upon having a picture of you. Also if using biometrics as a private key, those with a lot of money may become a larger target for things like kidnappings because criminals would know they can transfer large amounts of money with nothing more than their face.

I just thought of an idea that I would like to see come to life. First off, I believe that a perfect economy would have a freely and evenly distributed currency where everyone starts off with the same amount. All parties in an balanced economy should have a product or service they can trade, and once they trade through buying and selling, they should all have the same amount of currency they started with if they all participated in both a buy and sell operation using the currency. Obviously this idea would work in theory, in practice it's a different story. What if this could be made a reality with an anonymous bitcoin-style crypto currency that starts every individual with the same amount? This could be made possible using biometrics based cryptographic private keys where the keys could be re-generated using biometrics. I found an article on the successful regeneration of biometrics based cryptographic keys, it can be reviewed here:

https://www.intechopen.com/books/new-trends-and-developments-in-biometrics/generation-of-cryptographic-keys-from-personal-biometrics-an-illustration-based-on-fingerprints

I believe that biometric based cryptographic private keys could ensure that every individual could have their own private key unique to themselves and allows for every individual to have only one key so they can join the economy with a fixed and fair amount. I did find something similar to this idea here:

https://findbiometrics.com/new-biometrics-based-cryptocurrency-available-purchase-410175/

but I dislike it's seemingly centralized distribution as well as it's anti-anonymous nature. Two important features of Bitcoin that make Bitcoin so great. I also believe that the currency should be inherited on an individual basis for free, to eliminate all "taxes" on trades. This coin should be evenly distributed without any central authority "selling" the coin.

Thoughts?