Sensor Uses Body's Electrical Signature To Secure Devices

coondoggie writes with word that a "group of researchers is proposing a sensor that would authenticate mobile and wearable computer systems by using the unique electrical properties of a person's body to recognize their identity. In a paper [presented Monday] at the USENIX Workshop on Health Security and Privacy, researchers from Dartmouth University Institute for Security, Technology, and Society defined this security sensor device, known as Amulet, as a 'piece of jewelry, not unlike a watch, that would contain small electrodes to measure bioimpedance — a measure of how the body's tissues oppose a tiny applied alternating current- and learns how a person's body uniquely responds to alternating current of different frequencies.'"

Comments

Oh joy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet more ways to use "infallible" dowsing rods and iris gazers to "do identity". It always comes down to this: By definition biometrics are easier to fake than to replace. This makes them unsuitable for "casual" identification, as opposed to "adversarial" identification, ie working out it was you that stole the cookie from the jar. We're not all criminals, you know. Worse, most identification isn't adversarial, but casual, and on top of that you don't just have but a single identity. Yet that's what all this is invariably targeted at: adversarial, and just the single identity. Just stop it already. I'll take the inconvenience of using a key to unlock the door, or showing a loyalty card with a fake name on it, thanks. At least that key and its lock can be replaced without surgery.

Re:Oh joy

[Rei]

I was thinking the same thing. I'd thought of this concept a while back as a "turn almost anything into a key *except* a living organism" approach. That is, if you wanted a really nifty-looking key to your door, it could be some mystic-looking crystal, or some stone sigil, or whatnot. Measure how it interacts with a wide range of AC inputs provided from specific electrodes, and (assuming you have a good mechanism to fit it precisely in place on the same electrodes each time) you've got a unique signature for that object to unlock the door with. I'd think it would be very hard to fake, since trying to tune the shape/composition of a dummy "key" to adjust one frequency will mess with all the others.

Of course more than security, I was mainly thinking of that from a "wouldn't this be awesome and probably not that hard to implement?" approach.

News of the future

[cvtan]

In cybersecurity news, it was found today that a mannequin made of jello and floating grapes successfully duplicated the unique electrical signature of Mark Zuckerberg's body.

Re:News of the future

[leonardluen]

...and it was found that people thought the mannequin was more likeable than the real Zuckerberg...

Take a diuretic, become a different person

[hamjudo]

Electrical properties of living creatures are not really known for being stable, particularly among sick people, the intended users for this device. Good thing that the summary has so little to do with the paper, because the summary is pretty silly