International Journal of Advanced Technology and Engineering Exploration, Vol 5(45) ISSN (Print): 2394-5443 ISSN (Online): 2394-7454 http://dx.doi.org/10.19101/IJATEE.2018.544003 243 Assessment of vulnerabilities of the biometric template protection mechanism Taban Habibu 1* and Anael E. Sam 2 Research Scholar, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania 1 Senior Lecturer, Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania 2 ©2018 ACCENTS 1.Introduction Every individual is exceptional in terms of biometric feature traits that make them distinct from all other individuals. Biometric system offers a reliable solution to the problem of user authentication in identity verification. It is a pattern of authenticating the character of an individual using their body or behavior traits such as facial, iris, fingerprint, voice, palm print among others[1].The growing demand for improved security and the increasing volume of electronic transactions across wired and wireless networks has created a strong need for more reliable identity supervision. The existing aspect of the traditional biometric authentication approaches such as a token based and knowledge based techniques (secret keys, PIN numbers, the smart cards) are not consistent, easy to be forgotten, shared, stolen and guessed in the authentication systems, perhaps causing an identity robbery or misuse. The danger from identity thieves is more serious because, once a biometric sample is stolen or compromised, an individual identity is compromised forever. *Author for correspondence For instance, the identity thieves may result into the forgery of personalities. For example, in a financial institution, identity robbery might result into account fraud, payment card tricking, forgery of checks and use of stolen credit card numbers. In the healthcare domain, it might result in access to medical records, unlawful consent to restricted areas, unauthorized use of medical treatment, or health-insurance fraud. In the government organization, it might result into forged or abused identity permits/passports. This can have serious penalties as governmental identities are regularly used to validate personalities for other applications[2]. In Uganda more than 15,277 million voter’s fingerprints, were extracted from the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) database for voting in the 2016 presidential election in order to verify the person’s identity[3]. Though some observers appreciated them as good practice for fraud prevention and identity verification mechanism, the concern about the security of the biometric system templates and the potential breaches of the privacy of the user’s biometric data raised many questions. Like any other user authentication mechanism, a biometric system template can be Review Article Abstract In the ever-changing world of global data transmission, the security of data and individual privacy are the growing fears in today’s human life worldwide. The major concerns are the protection of the biometric templates in the biometric identification and authentication process. Storage of the biometric template in the database raises the chance of compromising it, hence lead to serious threats and abuse of the person’s identity. When an individual’s registered biometric data is disclosed, their security and privacy can be compromised. Therefore, public acceptance of biometrics will depend on the system designer’s ability to demonstrate that the systems are robust, with low error rates, and tamper proof. If someone’s biometric template inside the database is compromised, that consequently might imply identification robbery of that individual. In the recent past, a considerable number of methods for biometric template protection have been published. This article explains, a thorough valuation on numerous attacks and threats associated with the biometric system alongside the biometric template protection, elucidating the measures anticipated to address the threats, to the performance gap and establish the status quo of the current biometric template protection for public acceptance. Keywords Biometric mechanism, Biometric attacks, Privacy threats, Security threats, Biometric template protection.