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Vein Patterns Could Replace Fingerprints
Death Metal writes "Companies in Europe have begun to roll out an advanced biometric system from Japan that identifies people from the unique patterns of veins inside their fingers. Finger vein authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two years, is claimed to be the fastest and most secure biometric method. Developed by Hitachi, it verifies a person's identity based on the lattice work of minute blood vessels under the skin."
it's big and blue.
And here I was thinking that next time I go to court the prosecutor would be showing enlarged photo's of my vascular system
Vein patterns of finger prints im still chopping of those little pinkys.
Makes you wonder what else can be discerned from the pattern of blood vessels and other scan information.
Can't let all that valuable information go to waste, can we?
Maybe its me being pedantic, but I consider biometrics something that is intended to replace typing in a username, as opposed to being both pairs of the username/password combo. Ideally, one would have biometrics to ID which user is wanting access, then have a contactless smart card and/or a PIN for the "password" part that confirms the user is whom he or she said they are.
Until someone figures out how to revoke and replace biometric properties in case of fraud, I don't see why we should even be considering them as a serious replacement for good old passports.
I didn't RTFA but what if I banged my finger into something and hurt it. When it heals the veins shifted. What if my fingers are too dark to be scanned? What if I just had a frostbite?
An evaluation by the National Physical Laboratory in the UK found vein patterns to be the least reliable biometric they'd ever encountered, worse even than face recognition which became notorious for its zero-percent hit rate in several public trials (OK, so you can't get worse than zero percent, but in carefully controlled lab trials face recognition did get a non-zero score).
Looks like another great example of biometric vendor marketing at work. "Buy our stuff, it's gooder than anyone else's!".
It's less likely your fingers will get hacked off and taken by criminals trying to get past scanners, if this is used. Although I suspect criminals will find a way to flash-freeze fingers, seal the ends, and then warm up in water before using in the same situations where they could get away with severed fingers for fingerprints (remote access, etc.)
Get off my launchpad!
The gruesome possibility that criminals may hack off a finger has already been discounted by Hitachi's scientists. Asked if authentication could be "forged" with a severed finger, the company says: "As blood would flow out of a disconnected finger, authentication would no longer be possible."
So you'd need a contraption that feeds blood through the finger. It's an extra obstacle, but if you're desperate/psychopatic enough to sever someone's finger, rigging a blood supply is no big obstacle.
Bravo... however no matter how detailed the identification gets, it goes to a certain extent where you don't even try to mimic it (and we're already there). It becomes a matter of ones and zeroes in a sequence, the fundamentals are the same no matter the resolution or technology. This just creates a false sense of security, and it will of course be exploited as with any other current system.
I am the lawn!
Cragen
Well, at least this method offers less excuse to post gross pictures on Idle. So I'm all for it. Extra points for being able to give the bank machine the middle finger (yes, I've actually read the article).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
They recently introduced the palm scan to ID people walking in and out of their tests (GMAT etc). I still haven't figured out why. If nothing else it's an interesting way to get strange diseases from sick people who sneeze politely.
Robot voice: "Hello, mister... JOHN SMITH. You forgot to pay your... UNIVERSITY BILL. You'll be expelled in... THREE DAYS. Also, you have... BLOOD CANCER. You'll die in... SIX WEEKS."
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
It's also been in the news recently about body odour could replace fingerprints. I couldn't find the article I saw recently on BBC, but I found this one instead.
It talks about how biometrics could change security with regards to the recent lost usb keys and such.
From the article:
"A less tested form of biometrics is odour recognition, which is being studied to see if sensors can tell people apart by the way they smell.
Apparently, not even a strong curry can hide personal odour, but the tech required is expensive and has not been tested outside the labs."
Stick the GPL v3 onto your vein patterns. Then anyone who tries to use the data will be right royally screwed, and basically will have to be Stallman's running-dog Stazi apparachik for the rest of their miserable lives.
...getting sick of the endless ways to identify and tag individuals that have appeared recently? Fingerprints, iris scans, voice recognition, face regonition, smell (!) , walking gait, now vein patterns. How long before we're all just barcoded with a unique id??
I'm sure some people will say I'm just being paranoid but with the advancement of AI image processing it won't be long before we can be identified no matter where we are , what the time is , or what we're doing. Yes , the governments all roll out the "terrorism" line whenever questioned about this but we've all seen how its been abused already.
So whats next - infra red heat pattern signatures of individuals? Chemical piss analysis in public toilets?
An individuals crotch heat emmissions...
That would probarbly be more reliable then this.
I forget their name, but I actually used a working prototype that used this exact method of biometric identification.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
For the plain simple fact that they leave traces behind. Police work, you know!
The lunatic is in my head
The Japanese people all wear those finger-less gloves anyways, so this has probably worked out quite well for them :]
And two years until the Western world caught on to this~
Slashdot user since
Identification and surveillance technology is advancing very fast. There was a story a few weeks back about how keys can be copied from photographs, and I expect eventually Minority Report style eye scanners that work from a distance will become available. Maybe even fingerprints from a photograph.
AI is improving quickly too, and I expect eventually a computer will be able to take feeds from various cameras/scanners/RFID and use it to track a person automatically. At that point the UK government will want to put it in a database.
Privacy seems like something that will be part of the 20th century, but not the 21st.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Bloody Biometrics!
I hear of ever more "secure" methods for verifying who someone is. But why is this necessary? Are loads of people going around pretending to be others in ways that can be prevented by more magical technology? I thought most ID fraud was about using social engineering to get people to give up their details, and any biometric identifier can be faked. A fake iris is just a step up from a fake fingerprint... I'm assuming similar for vein patterns. Although the most publicised naughtiness comprises people with no records as footsoldiers, one would think that anyone sufficiently resourceful would have insider access to the database as well - make yourself John Smith by making John Smith into you, as it were.
What do I know. A certain group of entrepreneurs at a certain ickle pretty butter-wouldn't-melt school made a fine amount constructing variously styled fake ID cards for proof of age in the early-mid '90s. Some cards even had a 'phone number on them of a number you could call to "verify the authenticity of this card" - guess who that number belonged to - and I hear the forward-thinking team had set up a web site by 1996(?) for similar confirmation: "this card is valid!" type stuff (when men were men and wrote their scripts in C+CGI), optionally showing the holder's picture and any other identifying information the holder wanted to put there.
It is said that a couple of people put their fingerprints up on the site, and a third put someone else's up using the gift of cyanoacrylate - apparently someone didn't want to pay for their card but omitted to wear gloves around their dorm bed. With hindsight, this proved a very good point, but the guy didn't even know about it, I hear.
Anyway, the whole site closed about a year later when the Internet started being taken seriously (by law enforcement) and what started off as a schoolboy's game was clearly a step away from getting a small group into serious trouble.
Your mama has been identifying people that way for years!
Yes, because Mr. Criminal leaves behind his vein patterns at the crime scene.
If you scan both hands simultaneously, you can usually tell if the person is right or left-handed. The hand that is used more has a larger blood supply, bigger blood vessels.
It doesn't work on piano players, typists and some others who use both hands vigorously.
This is a privacy ACCEPTABLE form of biometrics. Why? Because it does not severely invade privacy like fingerprints, DNA, odor, and face recognition. All the other forms of biometrics I just listed can be used on you WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION, often if you are not even PRESENT. You can't shed or leave vein patterns wherever you go. You veins can't a photographed or video taped from a distance. You can't gather info other than ID with vein patterns.
Finally, a reasonable and secure biometric that can only be used with your permission, while you are present.
ID'ing people can still be abused- there are times when it is still nobody's business who you are, but in those times where it *is* necessary, this is an acceptable method.
yet another case of megalomaniacal self promotion/adulation skewing any possible benefit? easy come, easy goo?
why would it replace fingerprints? wouldn't it make much more sense to use them together?
Don't give them any ideas!
now people with varicose veins can just wave their finger from the back of the line and cut in front of the rest of us.
I would also like to point out that left-handed people are, typically, closer to ambidexterity than right-handed people. I was extremely left-side dominant as a small child, but, now I approach many tasks right handed. This would be a result of the estimation that ~90% of the world is right-side dominant.
As an example, biomechanically, using a screwdriver to drive a screw in left-handed is inefficient so I naturally at this point turn a screwdriver clockwise right-handed and counter-clockwise left-handed.
Just my 10 cents.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
There never existed a security system which can't be broken. As security systems evolve, the break-ins into the system too. An intelligent animal called a human creates a security system, why it can't be broken by the same but another instance of this intelligent human animal? Agreed, different instances of this human have different level of intelligence yet there will always be an human instance more intelligent than the creator of the security system. We sometimes call this "Theory of natural progression". It is a matter of time and evolution when this too will be broken.
Ans: Only another species of animal much more intelligent than an human can create a secure system for the inferior species. For example - we can create a real secure system for a chimp. Therefore, from my point of view security systems are good for only comforting us with a false sense of security.
.....................
If you mod me down well lets face it who really cares
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
... until someone loses a finger. Imagine how your bank might cut off access to your funds now! And it brings a whole new level of pain to a DoS attack. Or, considering we each have eight fingers and two thumbs, a DDoS.
This is not new. Vein pattern recognition on the back of the hand was developed years ago. So long ago in fact that the computer part of it was a BBC Micro.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
Plus, as an MD, I have quite some suspicion about the stability of some biometric methods over time or over pathologies.
Take today's method :
- it relies on vein patterns.
The main problem I see is that veins are biomechanically elastic, in order to be able to comply with varying amount of blood. It works as a "blood pool".
Depending on pathologies, the shape of the veinous network can change dramatically.
(same goes for retina. I mean looking at the change induced is the way to assess the progress of some disease like diabetes or hypertension).
Fingerprint worked so-so because the relatively stable : as long as the deeper structures aren't destroyed, the skin regrows with the same prints, no matter what.
Fucking up fingerprints require deep mutilation of fingers. These kind of accident can happen is heavy industrial workers, but its not something the average laptop wielding geek is very likely to experience. Thus fingerprints are good enough.
Whereas, the current trend of blood-related biometric systems are affect by pathologie (I've mentionned hypertension and diabetes) which are much more frequent, specially among the sedentary people: typically the users of such systems.
Thus, I have real doubts about the long term feasibility of such measures.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm left handed, but for using a mouse, my right hand is dominant. This means I can use a keyboard and mouse ambidextrously. Which is very handy for playing FPSs.
The company I work for (Konica Minolta) has these as an option on our MFPs (as an authentication system that avoids having to type in usernames/passwords to use the device). We've had them for quite a while now really (I don't pay that much attention to sides of the business that don't affect me, but it's at LEAST 2 years)
Generally we've found that people prefer card readers though.
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...been doing this specifically for security biometrics for years. Perhaps the news would be that it will become more pervasive, but the same problems that prevented it from taking off in the past apply now as well - you have to network the device in order to validate the user's pattern (most of them actually create a sort of hash code actually.)
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My mother who is in her 80's had a hassle renewing her driver's license as the fingerprint of her index finger had changed with age (and arthritis probably). If you think of the 5 to 10 year time frames of driver's licenses and other ID's, it is not hard to imagine problems with changes due to aging (not just things like losing a body part in an accident), there is a risk of losing your identity based on biometrics--any biometric. If you make things too easy to update, you increase the risks of identity theft...... (My dad was with my mom at the DMV, he vouched for her and they looked at the old lady, figured she wasn't up to anything, and gave her her new license. Which means some lonely clerk at the DMV could also have issued another driver's license in her name with another photo and fingerprint associated with it: I heard of a location where you can buy an official state driver's license and Social Security card for $300 here in Denver.)
It doesn't work on piano players, typists and some others who use both hands vigorously
lucky i alternate at regular intervals
On the flip side: Could you get layed off due to bad blood flow in your arteries?
Wow, you guys sure are concerned about someone hacking a finger off and using it for nefarious purposes. Given that Japanese BANKS have been implementing this for years, I pose the following question:
If you go to your bank and try to unlock your safety deposit box, how often do you get to do so outside the supervision of say, the bank manager?
"Hi there, bank manager I've never seen before, I'd like to access this box."
"Ok, we'll just need to verify your vein identity. Please place your hand on the panel."
"Um...ok. Are you going to watch me?"
"Why yes sir, we must be sure you are who you say you are."
"Oh. Ok. Well excuse me for a moment while I remove this severed finger from its plastic case."
"Security!"
This professor from Yokohama University has done demo where he made fake finger with Daikon Radish with fake veins. It worked nicely.
Japanese article about this:
http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/free/NC/NEWS/20050701/163801/
I always expected all humans to be like that. The only definition of left or right handedness is, what is your default when there are no other variables. As a car mechanic, there are places you can't get to right handed, and others you can't reach left handed. The situation defines the preference. Writing is mainly governed by politics (small p), that is to say, education. When writing was big (dark ages/middle ages), writing used slow drying inks that would smudge if you wrote from right to left when using the "pen" right handed. So they started top left. The monks did the most writing, and they also did the most teaching, so naturally the way they did it predominated. The oriental/eastern way of columns from bottom right was partly due to using long handled brushes - no smudges. I'm not saying this is how it happened, but it does make sense. Neither is "correct".
http://www.lumidigm.com/
Been to Disney world lately?
The whole fucking arm. Like in the movie "Domino". Just hook it up to a recirculator contraption.
But, back to vein readers. One interesting Japanese film, "Aegis", shows a defense intelligence agency officer using a reader to scan the back of his hand's veins to obtain access to a secure facility. Other Japanese and Asian films did similar, and these films were from 2005, initially written/shot around 2003-2004. Seems the US films often use retina scanners, or breath analyzers.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Sorry to dry up some of the steam of your 5, Funny...
But, AFAIK, the Yakuza take a FINGER, or two, depending on the severity of the offense. They don't normally take the whole wrist, unless it comes off in some Rashoman-style swordplay. Any offense warranting wrist removal might as well become seppuku or outright murder.
Even if BOTH sets of hands got removed, Japan has other ways for people to withdraw their cash, just like we do here. In the worst case, anyone who lost their wrists and STILL is IN the Yakuza or some other gang will probably have underlings, will have obtained a false hand, and will fall back on less-than-biometric means.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I always expected all humans to be like that. The only definition of left or right handedness is, what is your default when there are no other variables.
I think this may be what you meant, if not here is my own definition, based on my observation of myself and two daughters (one of whom is very left-side dominant, while the other is moderately right-side dominant).
Handedness is determined by which hand a person uses when an option is given, i. e. which hand do you throw a ball with naturally. As a child, I would throw left-handed, even if someone put a ball in my right hand. My daughter who is left-side dominant is the same way.
When writing was big (dark ages/middle ages), writing used slow drying inks that would smudge if you wrote from right to left when using the "pen" right handed. So they started top left. The monks did the most writing, and they also did the most teaching, so naturally the way they did it predominated.
My daughter (left-handed), if a piece of paper and a pencil or crayon is sitting on the table, will 99.9% of the time pick up the utensil with her left hand and start coloring or writing with that hand. The only time she will not is if the pencil or whatever can not be reached left-handed. At which point she will pick it up with her right hand and move it to her left hand
I am not disagreeing with you, necessarily, just pointing out my own observations.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
Does that mean i'd get a message on the terminal. "Its been verified that you are a one-handed surfer......"
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Where's my blue sharpy marker?
Error:
I've used them in the past in Japan. Well, attempted to use them. Registered my fingers multiple times, and over a period of 5 years, it worked once out of the maybe ten times I visited that office.
If you're taking medicine or have been drinking, it will also cause issues with the scanner, beyond the "doesn't scan" properly issues that I had.
What about all of us IV drug users who have veins crash on a semi regular basis?
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
I am left handed with writing and anything involving precision movements, but otherwise I use my righthand for almost everything else. Mouse, throwing, smoking, etc I all use my right hand for, using a hand to block something be it a swing at me or something thrown at me I use my left hand, but lack any sort of power in my left arm, all my arm strength andcoordination is in my right hand/arm.