Subverting Fingerprinting

squizzar writes in with news of a 27 year old Chinese woman who was discovered to have had her fingerprints surgically swapped between hands in order to fool Japanese immigration. "It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread. ... The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable — not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic." Time for some biometric escalation. Could iris scans be subverted as easily?

Comments

Did she fool anyone, though?

[AnotherUsername]

From TFA:

Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin's fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.

Seems like until they can get rid of the circular scars around their fingertips, they aren't going to fool anyone. From now on, when officials notice circular scars or other shaped scars around fingertips, they will probably have the person undergo further testing.

As far as iris switching...I don't think so. I have a feeling that the permanent blindness that likely follows(though I am not an ophthalmologist, so I can't be sure as to what is possible) will override any benefits that come from the short term gains of biometrics trickery.

Re:Did she fool anyone, though?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

From now on, when officials notice circular scars or other shaped scars around fingertips, they will probably have the person undergo further testing.

However, their cost to check has now gone up by at least 2x, maybe even 10x - they need to manually inspect every person (you can't just check the negatives because if the faker happens to have passed through successfully in the past their 'new' prints will already be in the database).

And this is only one attack vector. We've already seen the korean woman last year who used a practical application of the gummy bear trick to fool the japanese too.

The thing to remember is that these systems will only get less effective as time goes by. All the hype when proposed about how great they are, for whatever intended purpose, represents the best they will ever be - the more familiarity people get with the systems, the more ways people will figure out how to circumvent them.

Kinda warms my freedom loving heart it does.