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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."
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