Europol publishes guidance on preventing presentation attacks

Europol has published a new report on biometric recognition, focusing on presentation attack detection (PAD) methods that may be used by criminals.

In the analysis, the European Union’s law enforcement agency sets out a list of recommendations to strengthen biometric identity recognition practices in police investigations and border security. This includes introducing cutting-edge PAD technologies into their existing systems and adopting an integrated approach to biometric recognition.

Biometric recognition includes multiple interconnected processes, including data collection, storage, transmission, identification and verification.

“It is crucial to approach biometrics as a unified whole process,” the report says. “All these separate parts together make a strong biometric system and focusing only on one may be pointless if the other parts are not equally strong.”

Another recommendation from the Biometric Vulnerabilities report is to introduce standardized reporting and aggregation. Currently, there is no unified system to report attacks on biometric systems. Law enforcement agencies are also using different encodings systems for different types of attacks.

To get a better picture of the dangers of presentation attacks, law enforcement agencies should introduce a harmonized coding scheme and collect data on operational attacks internationally. The report also recommends raising awareness, enhancing collaboration and ensuring that data is processed securely.

The report was authored by the Europol’s Operational and Analysis Centre and the Europol Innovation Lab to raise awareness on the issue among law enforcement officers. The analysis focuses on the most commonly used biometrics, including fingerprints, face, voice and iris. Notable researchers that contributed insights include Christoph Busch, Marta Gomez-Barrero, Sébastien Marcel, Fernando Alonso-Fernandez, and Gian Luca Marcialis.

In March, Europol published a threat assessment highlighting that criminals are increasingly using generative AI for digital crimes – including identity theft.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  Europol  |  law enforcement  |  presentation attack detection  |  spoof detection