Comments on: Biometrics is not the answer!

By: kurt wismer

kurt wismer — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:23:42 +0000

@cdman83
i remember a spot on mythbusters concerning fingerprint readers, although i only recall them having 2 fingerprint readers in the show i saw (they were trying to get past a variety of security systems like fingerprint readers and thermographic sensors)...

of note, however, they managed to fool the 'liveliness test' (which was presumably one of those that looked for electrical conductivity) by licking the photocopied fingerprint....

By: kurt wismer

kurt wismer — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:23:42 +0000

@anonymous
iris scanning is not perfect either… i used to work in biometrics and when some folks from iridian came by one day to demo their iris scanning technology one of my colleagues got consistently identified as the previous person to be identified regardless of who that previous person was…

frankly, having worked in biometrics, i now have very little faith in the security provided by biometrics… at best what it seems to offer is a way to make it somewhat harder to fraudulently pose as someone else – not impossible, mind you, just somewhat harder…

By: Cd-MaN

Cd-MaN — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:39:05 +0000

@anonymous: one interesting test was performed by the Mythbusters (on the Discovery Channel). They were able to fool many, many commercially available fingerprint readers with very simple techniques (like a xerox copy of the finger!)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:06:39 +0000

Ah, I also wanted to mention – “only a convenience enabler” – at the end of the day, software is about users and data, not about security. As a result, a convenience enabler can be a big deal in the business world.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:06:27 +0000

This seems to be assuming that it is possible to fool biometrics systems with a mechanism which also passes liveness tests.

Not to say biometrics are the be all and end all, but "lifting fingerprints" doesn't strike me as a reason to rule out biometrics. Iris scanning is a more useful mechanism anyway.

By: kurt wismer

kurt wismer — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:34:37 +0000

“I must mention that there is one situation where it has added value over password: when protecting against the threat of someone watching you as you type your password”

unless of course the biometric is a fingerprint reader, because then you could just lift prints off the keypad/keyboard you were spying on…