Share it, or Not: A Quantum Secret Sharing Approach for Biometric Information

Fingerprint recognition systems [1] are based on quite complex algorithms for extracting the unique characteristics of individuals to identify and authenticate with a minimum of errors. Individual characteristics are captured by technical means, and then compared against previously stored templates to verify or identify an individual. The manipulation of the biometric data from the collection to the comparison with the ones stored in the databases, as well as the protection of the stored templates against their copying or alteration, are of crucial importance. Quantum secret sharing is a procedure of sharing a quantum message into multiple parts, such that no subset of the parts is sufficient to reconstruct the message, but the whole set is. This paper shows how this technique can be implemented to protect fingerprint templates. In this research, we extend quantum secret sharing (QSS) to quantum images, implement in Qiskit and show how a fingerprint template can be stored in quantum systems and then, using GHZ states can be shared, and the cooperation of all shares is required to rebuild the original template.