Iris Recognition Systems - Article Example

Date: Tutor: Task: Name: Iris recognition systems Introduction 1994 was the year when Iris recognition systems were patented for the first time. This technology works by the process of identifying the outside circular borders in the pupil and iris of the human eye and then comparing them to a given database. Initially they were developed by use of basic algorithm models which needed a human to be in the loop in order to see the iris within the eye. However this has now been automated (Besbes, Trichili & Solaiman 2004). There are possibilities that in future the alignment of the eye ball muscles and the retina will be used in identification. The iris recognition systems need to have the ability to cope with the heavy human traffic that can be found in any busy airport. This paper examines the iris recognition system, vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the system as well as how these weaknesses can be exploited by the wrong people In regards to Daugman (2004) iris recognition system technology is still young and it has the potential to achieve tremendous success. The technology is successful since it has been made to endure high operational use within public places such as airports and bus or train stations that are extremely busy. There are however many weaknesses in the Iris recognition systems. They present a very big concern in terms of reliability if they are not manned. It is possible to deceive the systems with portraits that are highly resolved in place of natural eyeballs. Therefore the systems cannot be said to be full proof. This is a major weakness and it renders iris recognition systems not very effective especially in access control that in unmanned or that which is not supervised by a human being. However they are seen to be very suitable to be used in the airports since they have human operators regardless of the level of advancement of the biometric system. They also have impressive speed and error rates. The accuracy of iris recognition systems is 96%. They may be this reliable but their use and procurement has very heavy financial implications that one cannot afford to ignore. The recognition systems go at a cost of about £1700 per set. This price is a bit high for use in private security. They cab be used with ease in places like air ports because many of them are dedicating a bigger part of their budget to security (Pierscionek, Crawford & Scotney 2008). Another weakness of the system is that it presents challenges with any technology. The iris is a tiny organ that presents problems when scanning from a distance. Since it is a target that is in motion it can easily be obscured by eyelids and eyelashes. It is also challenging to handle people who have cataracts or are blind because reading the iris is difficult. The camera being used in the exercise must have the right illumination amounts. If this is not there it becomes hard to get a good image for the iris. Together with illumination there comes another issue of reflective surfaces in the camera range together with any occurring lighting that is not usual. All these things have an impact on the possibility of the camera capturing an accurate image. The system that is linked to the camera can only capture monochrome format images at the moment. This causes problems coming form the disadvantages of the grey scale which makes it hard to differentiate the pupil from the darker colorations of the iris (Daugman 2004). Therefore the intrusiveness experienced with iris recognition is very minimal there is the need for people to cooperate by enrolling in the iris recognition system and undergoing the authentication scans that follow. Enrolling a subject who is not cooperative is not easy. Lack of proper training for the users at the first period of enrolment brings trouble at the time of initial enrolment and during the authentications that follow. When the user id frustrated he cannot help to make the system easier for use and users won’t accept it as an authentication method that is convenient (Daugman 2004). Communicating with users is important if the system is to be successfully introduced. As with all the methods of authentication is necessary to have a back up plan. As with all authentication methods it is important to remember to have a backup plan. Normal day-to-day problems such as system failures, power failures, network problems, and software problems can all contribute to rendering a biometric system unusable (Besbes, Trichili & Solaiman 2004).Once users get accustomed to such a system it is unlikely that they will remember to bring their other forms of identification with them to the office. System administrators also have the additional pressure of ensuring the system that stores the iris record database is properly secured to prevent tampering with the data stored. Although these are not major hindrances to the actual iris recognition system it is important to take these things into consideration and have a backup plan. Iris recognition systems have been found not to have secrecy because anybody can access the parts of our body being used. The iris recognition trait is impossible to replace yet a forgotten password can very easily be replaced. It is not possible to obtain a new iris image if the original one is stolen by an imposter. The system also suffers vulnerability from attacks from a person outside which largely reduces their security levels (Mishra & Pathak 2009).There have been identified eight vulnerability points or points of attacks to the iris recognition system and other biometric systems as well. These points of vulnerability may be divided into two broad categories. There are those that are called direct attacks and the others are indirect attacks. In a direct attack the sensor is the target and synthetic iris image samples are used. In this kind of attack there is no need for specific knowledge of the recognition system. The attacker does not need to understand the recognition system. The attack takes place in analog domain which is outside of the system’s digital limits meaning the mechanisms for digital protection cannot be put to use. The points of vulnerability in the indirect attacks are the sensor and identity claim, pre-processing and feature extraction, matcher, matching score, database and the areas between these levels. In the attack on the pre processing and feature extraction and matcher areas the process is undertaken using a Trojan horse which is able to bypass system modules. Attacks on the database have the system database being manipulated. Other remaining points of vulnerability exploit the weak points in channels of communication within the system (Ghouti & Al-Qunaieer 2009). As opposed to the direct attacks the attacker must get additional information over the internal operations of the system and in many cases he needs to access some application components physically in order to be able to execute the attack. Many of the works that report direct attacks use a kind of variant of the hill technique for climbing. A major weakness of the iris recognition system is that it can be exploited by people with bad intentions. The reliability of the system relies on making sure that the signals being compared was obtained by use of a live part of the body from the person being identified and not just a template that has been manufactured. Most of the iris recognition systems that are available commercially can be fooled very easily by a person who presents to it an iris or facial image of high quality instead of presenting the natural face (Daugman 2004).This makes this technology and system very ineffective when it comes to applications that are not supervised For many people the iris recognition system and other technologies of surveillance by the state and corporations compromise their privacy. The fear of some people is that this culture could lead to what is called ‘a total surveillance society in which the authorities and government being able to know thee operations and activities of all the people in a place throughout the day and night. This kind of knowledge is already being used and it could continue to be used to interfere with the rights of citizens to criticize anybody in office, corporate practices or even particular government policies (Besbes, Trichili & Solaiman 2004).Power structures that have this kind of surveillance capability in the world are known to misuse the privilege to access the privacy of citizens for which they use to sustain their control of the economic and political apparatus and at the same time curtailing populist reforms. Conclusion In this paper the iris recognition system has been discussed. Of particular interest in the discussion were the weaknesses and the vulnerabilities of the system, how these weaknesses are exploited by people with evil intent and privacy concerns about the system when used in surveillance. The iris recognition system just like any other biometric recognition system has its weaknesses. These weaknesses among others may include problems with scanning if the subject is some distance a way and the possibility of being fooled by portraits instead of the real face. This weakness has been exploited by people with evil intentions to perpetuate their activities. The technology of biometrics and iris recognition in particular has brought about concerns over privacy whereby people feel surveillance over their movements and activities all through is not right. The technology has also been used by governments to sustain their political and economic control. They have also used it to deny citizens their rights to criticize those in government as well as hindering populist reforms. As shown in this paper the iris recognition system has many weaknesses and areas of vulnerability that render the system not as effective as it should be. However changes have already been done and some of these weaknesses have been taken care of. Works Cited Besbes, F.; Trichili, H.; Solaiman, B. Multimodal Biometric System Based on Fingerprint Identification and Iris Recognition. 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies: From Theory to Applications, 2008, pp. 1-5, Damascus, 2008 Daugman, J.: How iris recognition works. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology 14 (2004) 21{30 Ghouti, L., Al-Qunaieer, F.S. Color Iris Recognition Using Quaternion Phase Correlation. Symposium on Bio-inspired Learning and Intelligent Systems for Security, 2009, pp. 20- 25, Edinburgh, 2009 Mishra, R.; Pathak, V. (2009). Human recognition using fusion of IRIS and Ear data. Proceeding of International Conference on Methods and Models in Computer Science, 2009, pp. 1-5, Delhi, 2009 Pierscionek, B.; Crawford, S.; Scotney, B. (2008). Iris Recognition and Ocular Biometrics--The Salient Features, International Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference, 2008, pp. 170-175, Portrush, 2008 Read More