Slashdot Mirror
Linux Biometrics Site Opens Doors
flickerfly writes "A new site to unite the individuals interested in Linux and Biometrics has opened its doors. LinuxBiometrics.com's purpose is to fill the biometrics void in the Open Source community. With the increased adoption of Linux in europe and the recent increase in biometrics interest by the EU, this appears to be a field ready to blossom into heavy adoption and will be in need of OSS support."
If your eye or fingers fall into the wrong hands, you've got bigger issues than access controls. Proper security works with something you have, and something you know; biometrics, and a password.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A cold finger shouldn't be usable, and that will keep them all attached!
So the bad guys will keep it in a thermos full of hot water until it needs to be used. Problem solved.
Seriously, though, the point that most people seem to be missing here is that your biometric identification information (fingerprint, retinal scan, iris scan, etc.) has to be stored somewhere. If it's stored somewhere, it can conceivably be accessed and altered illicitly, allowing acces to unauthorized parties. I believe most attackers will choose this method over the 'garden shears' option.
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... and low-tech thieves can just take the easy way out: chop off the finger.
Some experiments have found that public toilet wash basins are often full of more germs than the actual crapper.
I've often thought that retinal scanners should check to see if blood is actually flowing in the veins/arteries in the retina, but this is not (currently) feasible I think.
Actually, if there's no blood to inflate the vessels in the retina, the scanner will not be able to see them. In addition, the shape of the eye changes when removed from the head. Retinal scans of dead eyes simple do not work. Iris scans are a little "better" in this respect, but I've read that the eye changes enough that scanning a dead eye would also probably not produce a match.
I saw a conference talk on this subject a while ago, by a researcher who had been experimenting with cadavers. He was even able to get some livescans of eyes of terminally-ill patients and then check the same eyes post-mortem. I don't recall the name, but Google will probably turn him up.
The exact form of the criminal's counter-countermeasure of course depends on how the device works, but eventually they'll figure out how to beat it.
To a point, but all security is built on the notion that if you can make it hard enough, the attacker will decide to attack something else. When you start talking about providing artifical blood flow into the detached eye, or simulating pupil response, your average mugger will prefer to just kidnap the whole person and force them to authenticate themselves.
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