Quantum Secure Biometric Authentication in Decentralised Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Qasim, Tooba, Siris, Vasilios A., Oosthuizen, Izak, Rajarajan, Muttukrishnan, Biswas, Sujit
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Qasim, Tooba
Siris, Vasilios A.
Oosthuizen, Izak
Rajarajan, Muttukrishnan
Biswas, Sujit
author_facet Qasim, Tooba
Siris, Vasilios A.
Oosthuizen, Izak
Rajarajan, Muttukrishnan
Biswas, Sujit
contents Biometric authentication has become integral to digital identity systems, particularly in smart cities where it en-ables secure access to services across governance, trans-portation, and public infrastructure. Centralised archi-tectures, though widely used, pose privacy and scalabil-ity challenges due to the aggregation of sensitive biomet-ric data. Decentralised identity frameworks offer better data sovereignty and eliminate single points of failure but introduce new security concerns, particularly around mu-tual trust among distributed devices. In such environments, biometric sensors and verification agents must authenticate one another before sharing sensitive biometric data. Ex-isting authentication schemes rely on classical public key infrastructure, which is increasingly susceptible to quan-tum attacks. This work addresses this gap by propos-ing a quantum-secure communication protocol for decen-tralised biometric systems, built upon an enhanced Quan-tum Key Distribution (QKD) system. The protocol incorpo-rates quantum-resilient authentication at both the classical and quantum layers of QKD: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is used to secure the classical channel, while authen-tication qubits verify the integrity of the quantum channel. Once trust is established, QKD generates symmetric keys for encrypting biometric data in transit. Qiskit-based sim-ulations show a key generation rate of 15 bits/sec and 89% efficiency. This layered, quantum-resilient approach offers scalable, robust authentication for next-generation smart city infrastructures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_04852
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantum Secure Biometric Authentication in Decentralised Systems
Qasim, Tooba
Siris, Vasilios A.
Oosthuizen, Izak
Rajarajan, Muttukrishnan
Biswas, Sujit
Cryptography and Security
Biometric authentication has become integral to digital identity systems, particularly in smart cities where it en-ables secure access to services across governance, trans-portation, and public infrastructure. Centralised archi-tectures, though widely used, pose privacy and scalabil-ity challenges due to the aggregation of sensitive biomet-ric data. Decentralised identity frameworks offer better data sovereignty and eliminate single points of failure but introduce new security concerns, particularly around mu-tual trust among distributed devices. In such environments, biometric sensors and verification agents must authenticate one another before sharing sensitive biometric data. Ex-isting authentication schemes rely on classical public key infrastructure, which is increasingly susceptible to quan-tum attacks. This work addresses this gap by propos-ing a quantum-secure communication protocol for decen-tralised biometric systems, built upon an enhanced Quan-tum Key Distribution (QKD) system. The protocol incorpo-rates quantum-resilient authentication at both the classical and quantum layers of QKD: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is used to secure the classical channel, while authen-tication qubits verify the integrity of the quantum channel. Once trust is established, QKD generates symmetric keys for encrypting biometric data in transit. Qiskit-based sim-ulations show a key generation rate of 15 bits/sec and 89% efficiency. This layered, quantum-resilient approach offers scalable, robust authentication for next-generation smart city infrastructures.
title Quantum Secure Biometric Authentication in Decentralised Systems
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04852