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A Hacker Says He Can Recreate Fingerprints Just From A Person's Photographs

  
  Education
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A speaker at a yearly hacking conference in Germany has claimed the ability to recreate someone’s fingerprints using just photographs of their fingers, as reported by the BBC.

This capability would highlight the compromised nature of replacing passwords with fingerprints, which is already seen by experts as far from fully secure.

In his talk at the Chaos Computer Club – Europe’s largest hacker organization – Jan Krissler said he used a high-profile target for his attempt: German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Krissler, also known by the pseudonym “Starbug,” used several close-range photos from a “standard photo camera” of von der Leyen’s hand from a few angles before creating an image of her thumbprint via VeriFinger, a software program used to read fingerprints. (more…)

No More Fingers! 'Brainprints' to Be the Passwords of the Future

  
Analysis, Education
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BrainPeople can be accurately identified by their unique brain wave pattern, a new study has revealed.

A team at Binghamton University found that each of us has a personal “brainprint” that can be detected with particular techniques. In an experiment reported in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, the researchers, led by Dr Sarah Laszlo, explained how they selected 50 volunteers and showed them various images. 

These included photos of “a slice of pizza, a boat, Anne Hathaway, [and] the word ‘conundrum,’ ” the paper explains. As each subject looked at the images, an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine was picking up the way their brain behaved. 

The scientists found that each participant’s brain reacted in a different and specific way to the images shown. Building on that, the researchers managed to developed an algorithm which was able to match every person with their “brainprint” with high accuracy.

According to Laszlo and her colleagues, “brainprints” could become the passwords of the future. One could first be plugged to the EEG machine to record his or her particular “brainprint” as they look at some specific image, effectively setting a “brain pin code.” Then, every time that person sees that given image again, another EEG machine would cross-reference its brainwaves with a vast database to confirm their identity beyond any doubt. (more…)

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