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Why Your Next Phone Will Include Biometric Security
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Forbes:
"... it is an almost certainty that within the next few years, three biometric options will become standard features in every new phone: a fingerprint scanner built into the screen, facial recognition powered by high-definition cameras, and voice recognition based off a large collection of your vocal samples. ... We store an enormous amount of our most intimate and personal information on cell phones. Businesses today are already struggling with policies regarding bringing devices from home, and it’s only going to get more difficult. A study by Symantec highlighted the depth of the problem – around the world, all different types of companies consider enterprise mobile device security to be one of their largest challenges. ... Ever since Apple purchased Authentec Inc in July of last year, there has been an endless stream of news stories obsessing over whether Apple will include a fingerprint scanner in their next release. In reality, Apple is one among many players, and whether they include a biometric sensor in the 5S or wait till the 6 is largely irrelevant, the entire mobile industry has been headed this way for years now. ... There are separate questions as to whether these technologies are ready for such a wide-scale deployment."
How can anyone consider fingerprint identification on a touch screen as anything but toy security? You handle your phone pretty much each day, so it is highly unlikely that your fingerprints will not be all over it, in particular on the screen. With just a little bit of technique, every criminal will be able to get a usable finger print and unlock your phone. Mythbusters pretty much proved how easy these things are to bypass.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
And nobody cared.
I got a Motorola Atrix and was surprised to know about the fingerprint scanner. Everybody was talking about the lapdock and the dual core processor, nobody cared about that extra security.
Sorry, I share my phone with other people. I won't buy one which can't fall back to a simple password and I'm not going to setup different users on my cell phone - way too much effort.
a fingerprint scanner built into the screen, facial recognition powered by high-definition cameras, and voice recognition
Oooh, and if you cut your finger/forget to shave or lose your voice temporarily -- who needs to use their phone every day?
it is an almost certainty that within the next few years, three biometric options will become standard features in every new phone
Yeah? Who says?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Now identity theft will become so much easier, trojans will be able to steal all that information too and spoofing access will be that much simpler.
Twinstiq, game news
I have owned this phone for two years. It uses a well-placed fingerprint scanner on the upper back site of the phone, where your index finger naturally rests. It works quite well.
Get real.
The perfect spy. The NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS, Google, MasterCard etc love it.
What good will this do me, when every Nth app sends my address book unbidden to some external server, when the RF side is only tested with the big few vendors instead of actually properly protocol validated, when OTA updates trade operator convenience for my ability to trust my phone, when the thing keeps a close log of wherever I've been, when the operators keep years and years of that same tracking data, and so on, and so forth?
Oh, that's right. I have no rights. I'm the product, the piggy bank that needs to be broken. And the crowbar to do it is exactly that phone. Right, now we know why we "need" biometric security in our mobile leashes.
The original Atrix has a fingerprint scanner. And Motorola abandoned it.
My next phone is just six months away.
There are always a bunch of "people" (I use the term loosely) who will go for crap like biometric authentication on cell phones.
They hear buzzwords and think it is GREAT.
Proof of this- Myspace, Facebook, Twitter etc.
Crap, but people who crave being "on the edge" will jump at anything that lets them use buzzwords and buzz-worthy tech.
Personally, if cell phones suddenly became biometric only, I would stop carrying one.
I'd rather have a secure phone than one with nothing but buzzwords.
Isn't this more of a problem of enforcing device security policies? If the data is encrypted, does it really matter if the device is locked by PIN, pattern, fingerprint, facial recognition, or some other mechanism?
What all the proponents conveniently gloss over is that biometrics has not solved one fundamental problem: How to change the "password" once it gets stolen. And it will get stolen. Storing hashes does not help at all, as an attacker can just get new samples with ease. They just need to hack the sensors. Other ways exist. And once the biometric print has been compromised, there is nothing that realistically can be done.
This fundamental limitation is the cause that not real security expert takes biometrics seriously in unsupervised scenarios. There are enough wannabe security experts around that will gladly take a lot of money for biometrics that will not work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think my employer already demands too many agents scanners, tools, audits, logs and processes. Just encrypt the phone and even go so far that after the nth failed login it performs a factory reset.But enough of this "Let's add just 3 or 4 MORE steps to logging into your device" nonsense.
How do I get a new thumbprint exactly? When Mythbusters can clone my print with a gummibear or scotch tape, and my phone gets hacked, how do I get a new one?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Hmmm...identify...buy either the hand or forhead ...I've heard this before....Revelations 13 :-)
Given that much of the rise in crime in New York last year was due to people having the iOS devices stolen, how long will it be before muggings at knife-point typically also involve the thief stealing the owner's index finger too?
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
If I had to bet the light bill money one way or the other, my tens of dollars bet on Gov't using the the fingerprint information if they have the ability. I consider it a good sign that all American fingerprints, and DNA for that matter, are not in a database accessible to government/law enforcement entities. Despite all the "compelling" buzzphrases used by officials (children, terrorists, drugs, safety), some evidence still suggests we are a republic.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I had a win 6 phone with a fingerprint scanner years ago from HTC. My current phone (nexus 4) uses the front camera to recognize my face. Are we talking about new to IOS phones?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Just sayin
Ask any owner of an Atrix 4g (the original). Too bad Motorola left us hanging with gingerbread.
It will force the masses to buy a new phone because advertising will make the people believe that you must have it. Whether this is because of security or because it is the latest gimmick is irrelevant.
Your 4 digit code is enough security. If people steal your phone, they want to sell it. They are not interested in your data. If people are after the data on your phone, then biometric security will not stop them.
If your data is something they might be after, then you should also think if having it on a phone (that might get stolen) is the right place to have it.
One scenario if I am after your data could be that I call you from another stolen phone when you are in public. The moment you are saying hello, I grab the phone and have your phone while it is unlocked. I then change the lock settings.
There are many flaws with this idea, but I am sure there will be many more options if you think about then the 2 seconds I have.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
My phone isn't locked at akk, nectar of convenience. A FAST fingerprint reader is better them a password just because it would be more convenient, so I might use it. Which also refutes "fingerprint readers can be hacked". Yeah, so can PINs, much more easily, and I can pick any common lock within a minute, but they are still useful.
pass for me.
This is security theater at its best. It will provide no more security than the current Android "swipe" screen. Nosy cops are still going to be able to bypass any security by attaching their data sucking devices. Not to mention that Android is currently been getting hit hard by data leaking Trojans from the Android store. I don't want these virus writing scumbags having access to my fingerprint, face scan and voice print. Thanks, but no thanks, I'll stay with a swipe or a passcode.
"You mean all my biometric data stored on a Google/Apple device? Where do I sign up?? I hope that in the future it's uploaded to the cloud - it would be so cool to have it integrated into every facet of my life" - Timfoil Hatticus
Let's not forget that a SHA512 salted 8 digit mnemonic encoded password is far harder to crack than obtaining one's fingerprint on a touch-screen.
We should all carry keychain fobs that have a access code that changes every five minutes...
What happens when thieves can fake your finger-print or your voice-print? You will have no security at all.
What happens when your voice-box or fingers are injured. All that data will be locked inside the device.
No-one is mentioning the obvious: The NSA and DHS will demand back-door access and ban high-level encryption for their 'war on terror'.
When my current phone dies, I'm buying another dumb phone. I do NOT need a "smart" phone to track me and let others track me, I'll stick with a dumb phone that makes phone calls.
Be seeing you...
My voice is my passport. Verify me. Please?
Biometric devices are very good at providing a user name. I would never us them for anything else.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Bio-metrics are static passwords with very painful revocation, that one typically leaks all over the place.
Unless I wear gloves all the time to hide my fingerprints, wear a mask to hide my face, stop talking to hide my voice, etc., it is nearly impossible to hide my bio-metrics. And once captured electronically as data, they can be copied indefinitely, and cannot be revoked without a lot of pain and suffering.
Right now, criminals typically ignore capturing the bio-metrics of victims, since they are barely used by the public. But the public starts to use bio-metric for accessing high valued assets, there will be a huge financial incentive for criminals to dust drinking glasses at restaurants, photographing peoples, recording voices, etc.
Android phones have come with biometric authentication and have since October, 2011... http://www.android.com/about/ice-cream-sandwich/
This is so when the feds are tracking where all these phones are, they will also be able to confirm who is using them. (As opposed to just knowing who they belong to.)
Just what we need. Another dopey mechanism to interfere with the user experience. I'm already saddled with a dipshit policy pushed down from the corporate Exchange server that forces a password and timed lockups. The policy setting idiots will take something like this and further hobble my phone. Maybe even prevent me from say, handing my phone to a somebody even temporarily. "Here, take my phone. It's Bob. He wants to say 'hi'". The unauthorized biosignature detector fires off and disables my phone until I can contact the security Na.. er, supremacists.
I'm hoping people will wake up from the Matrix soon and realize that so many smart phone features are useless or making us useless. Here we've got marvelous tiny computers in our pockets that are capable of so much... and what do we use them for? Mind wasting via Angry Birds. Facebook, instead of socializing properly. Fart videos on YouTube. And Twitter? Please.
We store an enormous amount of our most intimate and personal information on cell phones
This is a regular and unfortunate misunderstanding. Most user data are not exclusively on the phone but stored on servers managed by third parties (think your Google Calendar if you're using Andriod). The better way to think of the cell phone is an access point to user data. The value of biometrics on the phone can be debated in terms of the ability for others to access one's data from the phone. It doesn't do anything to secure other vectors allowing acces to that same data.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When a Forbes column includes "...it is almost a certainty that" X, I think it is safe to assume that X is almost certain to not happen.
Like anyone can even know that