Slashdot Mirror
Fingerprint Scanners Still Easy to Fool
Anlan writes "A Swedish student wrote her Master's thesis about current fingerprint technology. After a thorough literature study some live testing took place. Simple DIY fingerprint copies were used (detailed how-to in the thesis). Have current commercial products improved as much as proponents claim? Well, this qoute from the abstract says it all: 'The experiments focus on making artificial fingerprints in gelatin from a latent fingerprint. Nine different systems were tested at the CeBIT trade fair in Germany and all were deceived. Three other different systems were put up against more extensive tests with three different subjects. All systems were circumvented with all subjects' artificial fingerprints, but with varying results.' You can guess how happy the sales people at CeBIT were - most systems claim to be spoof proof..."
Won't work, for all the reasons specified. However, what about recording the body temperature as well as the fingerprint?
Mod point free since 2001
Who cares about the scanners when the real problem lies in something entirely different?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
In a former career I spent time mixing cement. One day I was mixing a small amount in a 5 gallon bucket. At the time I had nothing to mix it with so I used my hand. After mixing I washed my hand and it was amazingly smooth. I didn't think much more about it. The next day the skin on my hand was very sore. I looked at it and noticed that the mixing had worn down the top layes of skin on my hand. To the point where I barely had any fingerprints at all. So if you want to remove your fingerprints temporarily in a somewhat painful(but not excruciating) way, just mix up a bucket of concrete with your hand..... Hmmmm, is this a circumvention device?
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
I think you missed his point, Dook"43".
He did not say that efforts to stop terrorism shouldn't be made, only that the efforts that are currently being made are pure PR fluff. Having M16 armed national guardsmen at airports was absurd. What were they supposed to accomplish? In any instance, opening fire with a machine gun in a crowded airport lobby would kill far more innocent people than terrorists. Not to mention, just how were these guardsmen supposed to tell if someone was a terrorist, before blowing themselves up or driving an explosive laden vehicle into the terminal?
Lets talk about other "safety" measures:
1) Turn all airport screeners into government employees. Well, now our dear TSA is moving to recertify airports to use private screeners.
2) Even with government screeners, security is like tissue paper. I attended a conference last week, and one of the vendors was giving out "swiss army" type knives, 5 blades + corkscrew, etc. He told me he had dumped a box 50 of these into his bag, and at the last minute decided to carry that bag on instead of checking it. He didn't even remember that the box was in there until he was in the air. He stayed quiet about it until after he landed, because he didn't want to get stuck somewhere in middle america. Security never even noticed. (BTW, he said he did report it to airport security after he landed and was outside the secured zone.)
If we are going to be serious about security follow El Al's proceedures, most of which are deliberately kept very quiet and out of the public view. Instead the current administration follows a typical american penchant to do something, anything that makes a lot of noise and is very visible for "feel good" moments, but which accomplish either nothing, or the opposite of what they are supposed to.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
A friend of mine in the office has some sort of skin condition which causes his hands to produce very acidic sweat. It's acidic enough to buff the leather on his steering wheel and gear shifter. His fingers will erase the letters off the keys on some keyboards (I assume some keyboards use better quality ink that is more resistant). Coffee mugs with cheap paint on them suffer the same fate on the handles.
This person can open any fingerprint-protected laptop in the office (we bought a bunch of these from some company who was beta-testing them, they are now out of production) and make it boot. He just smears his fingertip onto the sensor and wiggles it a little bit, and the machine accepts it as an authorized print.
These fingerprint detectors are of the capacitance-coupling variety. I don't know if the same trick works with the other fingerprint sensor technologies.