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Abstract

The invention provides a method of and system for automated verification and prevention of spoofing for biometric data, such as handwritten signatures. Biometric data known to be true, such as signatures already entered by the authentic person, are recorded and compared against test biometric data, such as a test signature entered by a person seeking authentication. The test biometric data is compared against the known biometric data, and is accepted only if the test biometric data is sufficiently "close" to the known biometric data, but not so close as to indicate that known biometric data was recorded and played back for the test. The test biometric data represents a handwritten signature given contemporaneously by the person seeking access, and is verified against a set of template signatures earlier given by at least one authorized person. A set of features are extracted from both the template signatures and the test signature; comparison of these features yeilds a distance measure between the test signature and the template signature. If the distance measure is either too large or too small, the test signature is rejected. The extracted features for a set of test signatures which were accepted in the past is also recorded, and the test signature is rejected if it is identical to any of the past test signatures.