Previous Politech message: "Biometric technologies and their problems, from German magazine c't" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04144.html --- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 16:25:15 -0500 To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> From: Steven Cherry <s.cherryat_private> Subject: Re: FC: Biometric technologies and their problems, from German magazine c't Declan, In a September article ("Who Goes There? <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep02/911e.html> I mentioned the German work in my final paragraph. Here's the last part of the one-page piece, which gives you the set-up: >Older, but not wiser > >Older ID and document systems have their own problems. Credit card theft >is a perennial, and apparently growing, problem. Even smart credit cards, >such as the American Express Blue card, can be hacked, as two researchers >in the United Kingdom recently proved. And in New Jersey, an investigation >by the Bergen County Record found that, among other things, security >failings allow driver's licenses to be issued despite the presentation of >inadequate identifying documents. New Jersey was home to at least four of >the 11 September hijackers, two of whom reportedly had valid state >driver's licenses. > >Even with valid documents, problems arise. In recent years, the U.S. >Social Security Administration routinely issued tens of thousands of >Social Security numbers to noncitizens who presented insufficient or >counterfeit identification. > >Adding biometric information to driver's licenses may not be enough. >Researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan have found they were >able to replicate fingerprints with a cheap artificial "skin." They >photographed a fingerprint left on a drinking glass, enhanced it with >photo-editing software, and then used a photosensitive sheet to transfer >it three-dimensionally to a sheet of copper. From there they could move >the image onto a highly elastic food-based gelatin. The fingerprint was >recognized by a variety of security systems about 80 percent of the time. > >That may be more work than is really needed. A recent book by three German >researchers told how they defeated a fingerprint scanning system by >breathing "gently upon the sensor's surface." They reported that on the >screen of the biometrically protected computer, "we were able to see the >contours of an old fingerprint slowly reemerge." In all, the team tested >11 biometric security systems and, by a variety of means, defeated each of >them. -- Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566 Senior Associate Editor IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016 <s.cherryat_private> <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org> --- Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 13:29:18 +1100 To: declanat_private From: Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarkeat_private> Subject: Re: FC: Biometric technologies and their problems, from German magazine c't >From: Markus Kuhn >Date: Wed May 29, 2002 11:16:20 AM US/Pacific >Subject: c't: unsupervised biometric scanners more toys than serious >security measures >An even more fatal blow to off-the-shelf *unsupervised* biometric identification products was given recently by three authors in an article in the well-respected German computer magazine c't: > Lisa Thalheim, Jan Krissler, Peter-Michael Ziegler: Körperkontrolle -- > Biometrische Zugangssicherungen auf die Probe gestellt. c't 11/2002, > Heise Verlag, ISSN 0724-8679, p 114-, 17 May 2002. > http://heise.de/ct/english/02/11/114/ ... Valuable paper, that! My summary of the quality challenges to biometrics is in slides 13-20 of a presentation to a Uni of Hong Kong seminar in May: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/BiomHKU.ppt (Achtung! Ppt!) I still haven't had time to finish the paper, but the flavour is given in my notes from CFP in April: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/NotesCFP02.html#BiomRC -- Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916 mailto:Roger.Clarkeat_private http://www.xamax.com.au/ Visiting Professor, Uni of Hong Kong, Dept of Comp Sci and Info Sys Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, Dept of Comp Sci ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q\clan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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