Abstract: Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) provides individuals with the ability to control how their data are managed. In this model, individuals are identified by Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) that are derived from a secret information. Consequently, compromising this secret allows an attacker to impersonate the victim. In this paper, we propose a novel strategy for generating DIDs leveraging hand vein patterns as the source of identity. We focus on using thermal imaging for contactless, hygienic, and liveness-guaranteed acquisition of hand and vein patterns. To ensure the generation of a stable DID despite minor, unavoidable variations in biometric acquisition, we incorporate fuzzy extractors. This mechanism guarantees that feature variations below a specified threshold result in the same consistent cryptographic key from which the DID is derived. Furthermore, our proposal supports the SSI Pseudonymity Principle by allowing individuals to generate multiple distinct DIDs to counter tracking across different contexts.

Keywords: Biometrics, FLIR, Fuzzy Extractors, Pseudonymity, Self-Sovereign Identity, Thermal Imaging

Pages: 152-159