Can biometric systems be fooled?
"When biometric security devices began appearing nearly a decade ago, they were often touted as the final word in security technology. After all, stealing your password is one thing -- stealing a thumb, a retina or a voice print is a bit more of a chore.
Hackers, however, developed techniques to fool biometrics scanners, much like they've found ways around spam filters and firewalls. Biometric device vendors, in turn, learned how to improve early scanners and algorithms to develop more ironclad security products." Read the full story.
Andrea says: Biometrics go way back in time - in fact, back to the 14th century when Chinese merchants would use ink to take an impression of a child's hand print and footprint in order to distinguish between them. Given the fact we have had so many centuries to develop the use of biometrics and we are still experiencing authentification failures of between 3 to 7 percent then in my opinion it is a given that it is NOT, and never will be, a foolproof method of identification.
The natural development path for biometrics is for it to become more intrusive to the human being - the more 'intrusive' it is, then the higher the rate of success (or authentification) and the harder it becomes for criminals to fool the device. However, the more intrusive it becomes, then the higher the bar to gain public acceptance.
The number of people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services is expected to more than double by the end of 2012
"Mobile payment users will reach 74.4 million in 2009, an increase of 70% over the 43 million users in 2008, the firm said. In 2012, that number should exceed 190 million users.
Once the 2012 level is reached, Gartner said more than 3% of all mobile-device users will be making mobile payments, at which point the practice will have become mainstream." Read the full story.
Andrea says: The market for contactless mobile payments using near field communications (NFC) is set to reach a tipping point over the next three to five years, according to Juniper Research. However, the mobile industry still needs to get consumer buy-in and whilst trial results have been quite good, the industry needs to convince consumers and merchants of the benefits of yet another payment mechanism on top of cash, cheques, credit and debit cards. There are also concerns about the security of the mobile wallet even though some of the service providers state that mobile is a more secure solution in general as mobile NFC exchanges can be secured with one-time token exchanges or PIN codes.
"Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric scanning after EU researchers successfully tested technology to verify identities for security checks. The experiments, which also examined the potential of heart rhythms to authenticate individuals, were conducted under an EU-funded inquiry into biometric systems that could be deployed at airports, borders and in sensitive locations to screen out terrorist suspects." Read the full story.
Andrea says: No one check (brain scan, fingerprint, iris scan) is going to be 100% reliable or acceptable and most agencies will have to seek a multi-layered approach. (Imagine defeating a voice scan and fingerprint scan whilst simultaneously passing a brain scan….?) The UK's Foreign Office is seeking to spend more than £15 million on fingerprint, facial, vein-palm and iris recognition to help secure its embassies around the world. As biometric security checks become more advanced they will be able to learn more about us in a few seconds than people could learn on their own in years. When brain scans become reliable, we will all experience them as we travel and biometric checks will continue to become even more intrusive and invasive. However, the youth of today are growing up with this technology and have a far greater acceptance of this intrusion into 'privacy' than the older generation.
Posted by andrea 23rd June 2009 at 4:16pm
