Posts tagged biometrics

FastNews: URGENT – Your Fingers Are Safe From Touch ID’s Security

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11 years
by in FastNews

When Apple announced their new iPhones at the company’s recent September 10th event, a number of innovations were introduced into the new 5s line, led by the “Touch ID” fingerprint scanner. Afterward, Touch ID received some uncertain feedback from podcasters, bloggers and tech fanatics, many of whom questioned its overall security. Of course, Apple wouldn’t (shouldn’t) release it unless they know it works most of the time and is safe (or they just have a good lawyer).

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The Setup Success Screen

One concern was that thieves, for some crazy reason, would want to get into your iPhone so bad they would cut off your finger to get the fingerprint. This concern spread about, prompting Apple to address it:  “The technology is built in a way that the (fingerprint) image has to be taken from a live finger,” says Sebastien Taveau, chief technology officer at Validity Sensors. “No one in biometrics wants to talk about cut fingers and dead bodies, but at the end of the day we are still asked to remove the fears of consumer and make sure that they understand that (a severed finger) will not work.” The way it does that is by using radio frequencies to detect “sub-epidermal” layers in your skin which only work if you are alive. So, if you were worried that someone would cut off your finger to look at your worthless emails and wickedly change your Facebook status, you’re thankfully wrong. In other words, it appears Touch ID is safe after all. Then again, who knows how easily someone could hack into it, but let’s not worry about that right now.

TechSpot: Pass-Thoughts May Make Logging In Easy

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12 years
by in TechSpots

Passwords are the key to our information security in the 21st century. Whether it is your phone’s password or your social security number, if someone gets a hold of it, it’s bad news. So, whenever we make a password, we (hopefully) try to make it as secret as possible. But, we are humans, and we forget. So we do something *nearly* secret, like the last four numbers of an old phone number, and think we are fine. But we aren’t. By using old White Pages or online sources, hackers can often get the information they need. We also don’t write down our passwords, for the same reason. How do we get around our security conundrum? Well, biometrics is coming to the rescue again by bringing NeuroSky Mindset to the table. neurosky-mindset-headset

It doesn’t look like much, does it? Just a pair of headphones with a microphone curiously placed high on your head. But, don’t judge a book by its cover. That microphone is actually a electroencephalogram (EGG) sensor. It can sense your brainwaves, meditation level, attention level and much more. The Mindset is not just for sensing brainwaves, though. It has a microphone, so it is also good for games, research, and other microphone needing applications. It is also useful for developers, and at a cheap $200, it’s a pretty good deal.

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An Early EGG

So how does this help with the password situation? Well, a team of researchers at the University Of Berkley recently designed and tested a hyped-up Mindset that reads what you are thinking/imagining. It may sound creepy, but it is great news for people with bad memories. The developers were afraid it wasn’t powerful enough, but when they tested it, they found out it work to a surprisingly low 1% error rate.

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A Guy Testing Out Pass-Thoughts

 

Using a Berkley Mindset is very simple. All you have to do is set up a “password,” they found imagining singing a song or counting colored shapes worked the best, and imagine that password whenever you want to log in to a phone or computer. They call these **pass-thoughts**. In terms of product integration into phones or Web applications, the system still has long way to go. But pass-thoughts are a big step forward, and potentially a new advance in information security. And I have to admit, they don’t even look half bad. For all its possible uses, the Berkley’s pass-thoughts for Mindset will hopefully make it’s way into the product landscape.

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