A fingerprint-based user authentication protocol considering both the mobility and security in the telematics environment

With the advance of the Internet and mobile communication techniques, the telematics environment where users in vehicles can use the Internet service has been realized. For the safe driving, however, we propose that user authentication for the Internet service is performed by using the driver's fingerprint, instead of typing his/her password. Since the driver's fingerprint is private information to be protected and the size of the fingerprint information is much larger than that of a typical password, we need a different user authentication protocol for the telematics environment. That is, in addition to the compliance with the standard X9.84 protocol to protect the fingerprint information transmitted, we use the watermarking technique to lessen the privacy threat, and propose a secure and efficient protocol between Access Points (APs) considering the possible hand-off during the authentication in the mobile telematics environment. Based on the experimental measurement of the proposed protocol, we confirm that the fingerprint-based user authentication can be performed in real-time in the telematics environment.