Worldcoin Upgrades Biometric Processing System, Deletes Old Iris Codes

The Worldcoin Foundation, in collaboration with TACEO, has introduced a new Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) system aimed at enhancing the security and privacy of biometric iris code data.

The system takes advantage of recent advancements in SMPC for Machine Learning to encrypt iris codes into multiple secret shares, which are then distributed among different parties; a method that enables computations to be conducted on encrypted data without disclosing the actual information.

SMPC is a cryptographic technique allowing multiple parties to compute functions on their private inputs collaboratively, and ensures privacy by dividing inputs into shares, preventing any single party from accessing sensitive data. Through cryptographic protocols, parties jointly compute results without revealing their inputs. It’s an approach that enhances privacy protection when verifying the uniqueness of biometric templates.

This approach, which is open-source and available on GitHub, ensures that iris codes remain encrypted at all times during the deduplication process. Worldcoin’s embrace of it marks a significant improvement over previous methods that required decryption of iris codes for each comparison. Following the migration to the new SMPC system, the old iris code data and the previous uniqueness-checking system were securely deleted.

The implementation of this advanced SMPC protocol involved testing and auditing by Least Authority —a security consulting firm that specializes in auditing and improving the privacy and security of systems of cryptographic technologies — to ensure its reliability and security.

Although it requires substantial computational resources, the new system should provide improved levels of data protection and privacy. The initiative has received support from data protection authorities, including the Bavarian Data Protection Authority.

Source: Worldcoin

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May 16, 2024 — by Ali Nassar-Smith