Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Develop System To Send Passwords, Keys Through Users' Bodies (onthewire.io)
Trailrunner7 quotes a report from On the Wire: Credential theft is one of the more persistent and troubling threats in security, and researchers have been trying to come up with answers to it for decades. A team at the University of Washington has developed a system that can prevent attackers from intercepting passwords and keys sent over the air by sending them through users' bodies instead. The human body is a good transmission mechanism for certain kinds of waves, and the UW researchers were looking for a way to take advantage of that fact to communicate authentication information from a user's phone directly to a target device, such as a door knob or medical device. In order to make that idea a reality, they needed to develop a system that could be in direct contact with the user's body, and could produce electromagnetic signals below 10 MHz. And to make the system usable for a mass audience, the team needed widely available hardware that could generate and transmit the signals. So the researchers settled on the fingerprint sensor on iPhones and the touchpad on Lenovo laptops, as well as a fingerprint scanner and a touchpad from Adafruit. The concept is deceptively simple: generate an electromagnetic signal from the fingerprint sensor or touchpad and transmit that through the user's body to the target device. The signal can carry a typical password or even an encryption key, the researchers said. "We show for the first time that commodity devices can be used to generate wireless data transmissions that are confined to the human body. Specifically, we show that commodity input devices such as fingerprint sensors and touchpads can be used to transmit information to only wireless receivers that are in contact with the body," the researchers, Mehrdad Hessar, Vikram Iyer, and Shyamnath Gollakota, of UW said in their paper, "Enabling On-Body Transmissions With Commodity Devices."
I would just have to steal the phone and use my body and voilÃ, I'm in. If the body and the state of the body (distress) aren't part of the authentication this is useless
while neat, now they just don't need to rob your wallet, they also need to rape you.
ELECTRICITY. It's a new term that describes using pulses of electrons sent through the sender's body to a receiver that can "decode" the pulses of electrons into data sets.
In a related story, researchers find a means to unlock energy potential in static objects such as rocks and trees. They are tentatively calling this process "fire".
That's right. By passing various fecal gases in the exact proper order, an individiual will have a unique, convenient biometric encryption key, provided that he maintains a regular diet of beans and cabbage. Breaking the encryption is only possible after an FMT and changes to the diet.
A whole new way to reach out and touch some one.
Why is Snark Required?
Shocking news!
Table-ized A.I.
Can I just pay with cash ?
Not all of us want to be tethered by a mark. Which coincidentally is exactly what the bible predicted. And Orwell.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I personally have zero concerns about a culture where every time I touch a freaking doorknob it gets logged by Google et. al.
Low level electromagnetic fields cause cancer, especially to younger kids. Scientists aren't sure why, but the studies are too highly correlated to ignore. I'm not sure what level is low-level, but I figured I should toss this info out there. Does anyone know more info about it?
Slashdotter: You want my passwords? You'll only get them over my dead body!
Researchers: Your terms are acceptable.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
They had a "Java ring" which used that technology to communicate with others. That way you could exchange contact information just by shaking hands with someone.
In reality this isn't constrained to ones body, just like coaxial cables you do have a certain leakage to the outside.
Not all of us want to be tethered by a mark. Which coincidentally is exactly what the bible predicted..
Assuming you're old enough, what do you call your Smallpox scar?
And if you're not old enough, what do you call your your parents' and/or your grandparents' smallpox scars?
Looks like a mark to me. And let's see... it happened because scientists played God on a global scale to interfere with one of God's purposely designed wraths.
Either you're already marked, or you're the evil incarnate offspring of marked heathen parents.
Checkmate.
Which exchange bitcoin in real-time as services are rendering.
I guess it will make brute forcing that much more... gross...
Anal probe validator, South Park style.
We show for the first time that commodity devices can be used to generate wireless data transmissions that are confined to the human body
This isn't "wireless" you've simply turned the human body into a "wire" and no, this isn't the first time that's been done.
See: Texas' criminal sentencing laws for murder...
I wonder if ISIS-Daesh is not beheading people on YT because they are psycho medieval brutes, but rather they are hackers harvesting passwords from the infidels?
Look up Microchip Bodycom doing exactly this about 3 years ago.
Eat your password, wait a couple of hours, then OCR the output.
Saw something like this about 15+ years ago on a mainstream TV (France2).
At this time, it was scientists at IBM who transmitted non secret data while shaking hands.
~Same L1. Nothing new.
I'm sure this can be picked up at a distance with enough effort. Maybe more difficult than NFC, but I'd still not want to transmit a cleartext password / shared secret over it. So manufacturers should bite the bullet and include crypto anyway. Hopefully there will be a standard soon, as it's hard to implement anything from cryptographic primitives and do it well.
That's what happens when scientists discover physical contact.
Imagine what we will have when they discover sex... :-)
"Out of your head"? That's about were the Mark Of The Beast goes. This invention completes the puzzle. Wanna do business? Shake my hand, the chip will do the rest.
...shall be called Man WITHIN the middle attacks.
It will cause cancer, you just wait.
As well, they conveniently left out the word "chipped". This is just installing chips in people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That Starner had a system like that already in place at MIT for his wearables research he called it PAN (the first real use of PAN) and ad it via touch.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hey baby, come get some of my dead skin cells. Oh yeah.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
This could have advantages over NFC and similar short-range communications. Someone can read an NFC chip in gour wallet by simply standing behind you in a crowded place. This would require direct contact with skin, rather than only being nearby.
Your smart watch could authenticate you to a fingerprint reader, with little risk that someone standing next to you could eavesdrop, because the signal goes through your flesh, not through the air.
It's called a shotgun!
The mark of the beast!
*yawn*
Well i would think it's ok to treat this like any other insecure channel an transmit challenge and response.
But for sure not a cryptographic key.