Forwarded From: phreakmoi <hackereliteat_private> http://www.infoseek.com/Content?arn=a2236reuff-19981118&qt=%2Bhacker&sv=IS&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486 More than passwords needed for Internet privacy 02:40 p.m Dec 10, 1998 Eastern By Andrea Orr LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - High-tech companies that once dismissed concerns about online privacy are increasingly concurring with the critics. If the Internet is ever to become a truly secure way to shop and exchange sensitive data, they say, it will take more than just secret passwords to protect private information. Passwords are already passe, judging from the exhibit floor at the huge Comdex computer trade show here, where several companies pushed so-called biometrics as the next wave of network security. Using small computer attachments to read eyes, fingerprints, voices or other personal features, biometrics offers secure ways to access information that cannot be stolen, shared or forgotten. The biometrics industry is small but is rapidly gaining attention in high-tech circles. In his keynote address in Las Vegas earlier this week, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates cited online privacy problems as a key pitfall of a wired world, and said biometrics offered a promising solution. Earlier this year, a group of biometrics companies, including Iriscan Inc. of Marlton, N.J., and Identicator Inc. of San Bruno, Calif. formed a Washington-based trade group to represent them in the public policy debate over Internet security. Some of these companies have been around for decades but have only served specialized high-security markets like prisons. They hope the growing attention to security in everyday transactions will pave the way for things like fingerprint readers or iris-scanning software to be installed in millions of home and office computers. Currently a $25 million-a-year industry, biometrics will by some estimates expand to $1 billion by the year 2000. Some predict the rush to install biometric security systems will replace the Year 2000 computer crisis as the most pressing high-technology project after the millennium. Visionics Corp. of Jersey City, N.J., makes face recognition technology, and two Florida companies, Saflink Corp. and TrueTouch Technologies Inc., make a range of products to recognize users by various features, including voices. Another company, Cyber-Sign Inc. of San Jose, Calif., advocates signature verification. All these companies are promoting their products in the same way, as security systems that cannot be stolen, forgotten, shared, or intercepted by hackers -- problems they say make password-based security system somewhat flimsy. While millions of electronic commerce transactions are completed without incident every day, experts fear inadequate security on the Internet leaves lots of sensitive information vulnerable. In one recent example of the limits of passwords, a group of hackers from Europe broke into the e-mail system at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., stole thousands of student and staff passwords and went undetected for three weeks. Another problem is that computer users have become too trusting, using the same password to enter both secure and insecure Web sites, from where they are more easily stolen. -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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