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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.
Funny you should say that, my first thought when I read "Finger vein authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two years" was that it's got to be a bitch to withdraw cash from an ATM if you're a Yakusa...
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.
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.
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.
...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?
For the plain simple fact that they leave traces behind. Police work, you know!
The lunatic is in my head
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.
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.
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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.
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 ]
...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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I am under the assumption that it would rather difficult to get close enough (contact) to someone and use a special light and scanner/sensors to obtain vein patterns without a person knowing... except if maybe they were asleep. This isn't a photograph, it is a contact scan that requires multiple infrared light sources.
From a security standpoint, even if you did obtain someone's scan, then how exactly would you impersonate a fake vein pattern in your arm to trick a scanner?
I do want to point out that I would not agree with using fingers, however, since a scanner could also obtain fingerprints, which is NOT AT ALL privacy friendly. A better approach would be to read the veins in the back of the hand.