Slashdot Mirror
Fingerprint Scanners Fooled By Play-Doh
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us YubaNet is reporting that in recent tests by Stephanie C Schuckers, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkston University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh molds. From the article: "Schuckers' biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. She is currently assessing spoofing vulnerability in fingerprint scanners and designing methods to correct for these as part of a $3.1 million interdisciplinary research project funded through the NSF."
This is old hat, sortof.
German computer magazine C'T defeated fingerprint scanners a few years ago using gummibears. Im sure www.heise.de should ahve a (german) copy of that still online somewhere
For all us not not from the same cultural sphere as the submitter, Play-Doh is a clay-like compound used by children to form various things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-Doh
Last summer on WTH: Spoofing fingerprints in 10 minutes shown at WTH last summer. The guy on the video also says that he never encountered a fingerprint reader which couldn't be fooled. Interesting is also to see is that he does not make a fake finger, but only a thin acryl layer placed over ones real finger. And also on the CCC website: A image gallery with text (EN) how to copy a finger print. So it's not all about the Play-Doh
Now ordinarily the parent would simply be regarded as a troll, but all you have to do is look through a few Slashdot journals to see examples of quality submissions that have been rejected. The fact that a search engine spammer's articles get preference really explains this kind of frustration.
I'd like to hear some kind of explanation from the editor(s). I'd like to think that this is simply some kind of failure of process rather than something fundamentally wrong with Slashdot itself. It would be nice if the next Slashback dealt with these issues in some way.
May the Maths Be with you!
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Of course nobody's paying anybody. Seriously, what would make you think that? If there were paid stories, don't you think we would make that blatantly obvious? Since it was created, Slashdot has been one of the best sites on the internet as far as keeping up the wall between advertising and content.
Apparently this person submits a lot of stories that our editors think our readers want to read. That's all there is to it. Our editors review Beatles-Beatles submissions with the same skepticism (probably more) as any other.
I normally don't bother responding to paranoid threads like this because there is so much paranoia and no way for us to respond to it all. But lately the comment volume devoted to silly speculation is just out of control. I kind of doubt this response will help stem the tide but it's worth a shot...