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Prepared by:
Elisardo Gonz´alez Agulla, Enrique Otero Muras, Jos´e Luis Alba Castro, and Carmen Garc´ıa Mateo

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Abstract

One of the major early problems that biometrics faced was the lack of interoperability between different software applications and devices developed by different vendors. The BioAPI Specification has defined an open system standard application program interface (API) which allows software applications to communicate with a broad range of biometric technologies. This paper describes the design and implementation of an open source Java framework intended to provide single sign-on web authentication based on BioAPI-compliant biometric software or devices. The open-source principle makes this system a novel and practical development tool for testing and integrating biometric modules and devices from third parties.

Introduction

The popularity of broadband internet and cell phone connections has introduced many high added-value remote services where it is important to verify the identity of the authorized user. Classical techniques for electronic person authentication have several drawbacks in terms of performing reliable and user-friendly identity recognition; this occurs particularly with remote operations, where hacker attacks add to forgotten, shared, lost or stolen passwords or cards. Automatic identity verification, based on distinctive anatomical features (e.g., face, voice, fingerprint, iris, etc.) and behavioral characteristics (e.g., online/offline signature, keystroke dynamics, etc), is becoming an increasingly reliable standalone solution and attracting a great deal of attention as far as remotely-based applications are concerned. Nevertheless, this kind of biometric authentication implies new technological challenges that must be addressed to ensure full acceptance in many remote services [1]. One of the major early problems that biometrics faced was the lack of interoperability between different software applications and devices developed by different vendors. For this reason, the BioAPI Consortium was founded to develop a biometric Application Programming Interface (API) that would bring platform and device independence to application programmers and Biometric.