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 Biometric Face Recognition Exploit |
Posted by
michael
on Friday June 27, @05:56PM
from the faceoff dept.
clscott writes "A researcher
at the U. of Ottawa has developed an exploit to which most
biometric systems are probably vulnerable.
He developed an algorithm which allows a fairly high
quality image of a person to be regenerated from a
face recognition template. Three commercial face rec.
algorithms were tested and in all cases the image could
masquerade to the algorithm as the target person.
Here are links to a
talk
and a
paper.
Unfortunately, biometric templates are currently considered
to be non-identifiable, much like a password hash.
This means that
legislation gets passed to require
hundreds of millions of people to have their biometrics
encoded onto their passports. This kind of vulnerability
could mean that anyone who reads these documents has access
to the holders fingerprint, iris images, etc."
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Biometric Face Recognition Exploit
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This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:5, Funny)
by NumberField (670182) *
on Friday June 27, @05:57PM (#6315242)
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This isn't a problem because most people have extras of the body parts used for
most biometric schemes. For example, you probably a large supply of fingers (about ten),
so it doesn't matter if a few get compromised. Similarly, if you have two eyes, it's not
a big deal if your retinal print becomes known to bad guys.
(P.S. Please no replies from humor-impaired folks.)
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:5, Funny)
by gerf (532474)
on Friday June 27, @05:59PM (#6315259)
(Last Journal: Monday July 29, @09:50AM)
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This
isn't a problem because most people have extras of the body parts used
for most biometric schemes. For example, you probably a large supply of
fingers (about ten), so it doesn't matter if a few get compromised.
Similarly, if you have two eyes, it's not a big deal if your retinal
print becomes known to bad guys. (P.S. Please no replies from
humor-impaired folks.)
I don't get it. The way you're talking isn't in a standard joking
format at all. Maybe you Canadians have a different sense of humor?
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:5, Funny)
by Xzzy (111297) <sether&tru7h,org>
on Friday June 27, @06:27PM (#6315462)
(http://tru7h.org)
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I'm sorry, go back and read chapter two, where they talk about humor
types by geographic region. Your above intended format falls into
"excessively dry", which if my memory serves is a method perfected, and
quite jealously defended, by the British.
American humor is expected to involve either bodily functions or blonde women.
Failure to employ region-appropriate humor will potentially flag you for review as a potential terrorist.
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:5, Funny)
by YU Nicks NE Way (129084)
on Friday June 27, @06:56PM (#6315630)
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Please put your tin-foil hat away. The incorrect use of humor will
not flag anyone for review as a potential terrorist. There is no
reason to be concerned that we will interfere with any humor-related
deviance. It is only in those cases where individuals with perverted
senses of so-called humor that pose a threat to our national security
(as determined by our objective and reproducible criteria), and who
aver themselves unwilling to participate in our voluntary
humor-retraining camps, who will be marked for review. In order to
reduce the number of individuals whose privacy will be sacrificed to
review, we will use only publicly available data. In order to
incentivize those who will be encouraged to attend humor-improvement
camps, we intend to locate them in tropical locations near to the
ocean, but not on US territory. |
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:1)
by majestyk2000 (256822)
on Tuesday July 01, @01:21PM (#6340620)
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Jim Carey, Dana Carvery, Mike Meyers and Lesley Neilson.
I'm
not sure how you did it, but you managed to misspell EVERY name in that
grouping there. How about we give you back all those people, and keep
Jim Carrey, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, and Leslie Nielsen? At least you
spelled John Candy right. |
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:3, Insightful)
by randyest (589159) <(ranorano) (at) (hotmail.com)>
on Friday June 27, @06:33PM (#6315508)
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This isn't a problem because most people have extras of the body parts used for most biometric schemes.
It's not a problem at all. On the contrary, it is a really good
discovery IMHO. The most important conclusion from this is (from the
talk slides):
Biometric software systems should provide
yes/no only, with no match score values.
My question is: why would the software systems ever need to
give a match score value, instead of a yes/no answer in the first
place? It's not like the algorithm developer is there operating the
machine and can thus use the score result to help decide what to do
with "near" matches. Most of the people using these machines, I would
surmise, are pretty clueless about how they work (except in a very
general sense, of course), so providing a score result would only be
confusing and a potential source of misidentification:
"Hmm, that John Doe matched with a score of 95, and it turned out
not to be the guy, so this 94 score can't possibly really be Osama Bin
Laden -- go ahead and let him on the plane with his antique ceremonial
religious knives."
Either the system thinks it knows the person's face, or it
doesn't. That's all it needs to say. Saying just that and nothing
more will protect privacy (in that you can't reconstruct the face
without the template and quantitative match score results), and it will prevent operator confusion and some types of misapplication.
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:3, Insightful)
by PaulBu (473180)
on Friday June 27, @07:47PM (#6315930)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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Maybe because in different situations different threshold would have
to be applied. E.g., if it is a terrorist monitoring camera on a random
street corner, it might not be feasible to unleash FBI agents after
every guy who matched at 80%, but if that random street corner happens
to be in Washington, DC across the street from the White House, 80%
confidence might be a reason to trigger further actions.
And
if it is a camera in the cash machine and you claim that you are Joe
and want to get your $500, you better match Joe's face at, say, 99% (it
can also ask you to turn a bit and face the lens if your score is lower
than some threshold.
Another example, if an airport screener can
realistically check 10 people out of a hundred, she chooses ones with
the highest scores. Yes, it might mean that John Doe in your example
will be checked, and Osama will be not, IF there are other 9 people in
line with scores >=95.
Algorithms used might be the same, but exact policy is implemented by taking scores into account.
There is more than binary yes/no in this world...
Paul B.
P.S.
Not that I know anything about the actual numbers or policies, but I
can see the value of having the scores available to people who program
the machine, but not necessarily to the screeners (if any) who operate
them. |
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Re:This problem is solved by redundancy (Score:1)
by Axel Eble (685299)
on Saturday June 28, @12:59PM (#6319882)
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Did you think about what will happen when your face is incorrectly
recognized? Knowing people I believe you will be singled out at
$airport and treated as a terrorist even if you could prove that you
are not the culprit. The
current political climate in the US (and several other terrorist-crazed
parts of the world) will happily use anything that they think might
work without wanting to hear people who see the problems with the
latest and coolest technology. The end users will believe the system because they were trained to. The innocent people that happened to suffer from a false positive will lose the most.
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Think of what might happen to body parts (Score:3, Insightful)
by gotr00t (563828)
on Friday June 27, @08:25PM (#6316129)
(http://mod.homelinux.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 07, @01:34AM)
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When will people get concerned that their body parts are now
vulnerable? Desperate criminals who want to infiltrate, or governments,
for that matter, would find it rather suitable to simply kill a person
and remove their face, eyes, fingers, etc., to use in a biometrics
device. This is even easier to compromise than having a keycard or
something, as the individual could at least hide it somewhere. They
CAN'T hide their face without |
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Regarding eyes (Score:2)
by Merk (25521)
on Saturday June 28, @01:29AM (#6317810)
(http://infofiend.com/)
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I remember reading a paper about biometric identification using the
iris. The bit I remember is that it is really easy to tell if the eye
you're scanning is alive or not. For example, as part of the scanning
process the machine just needs to go from dark to bright in a short
time. If it does that and the pupil doesn't narrow then the eye isn't
attached to a living body. I can't speak for other body parts, but
it's unlikely anybody will pluck out your eyes and scan them.
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Biometrics: Read Bio - "Living" (Score:1)
by MadCow-ard (330423)
on Saturday June 28, @02:59PM (#6320482)
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It is not a pure fingerprint reader anymore, it is a "living
specimen" and fingerprint reader. Sure the old ones are still sold,
but they are considered low end. If any real security is needed, the
latest generation will detect living versus dead. The previous post
mentions the same with iris readers. The same is true of retinal, hand
geometry, and voice print (theoretically by multiple passes). The only
one I'm not sure of is facial geometry, but I would assume that digital
video from which its taken would clear up the issue of dead or alive ;-).
Lets see how long it takes to hack the new systems. It seems
to me the real vulnerability is not in the recognition, but in the fact
that the system is computerized and therefore hackable. And as we all
bemoan with Biometrics, once comprimised, forever lost. |
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Other systems too? (Score:5, Interesting)
by mgcsinc (681597)
on Friday June 27, @05:59PM (#6315256)
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Personally I use BioPassword for authenticating my workstation using
keystroke recognition, so I seem to be safe from the exploit as yet;
holding an image up to a computer seems like it would require
considerably less effort than attaching a PS2 device that typed at
exactly the correct rate. Nonetheless, I wonder if this discovery will
prompt the redesigning of the way user data is stored across the
biometric spectrum, going as far as the oft considered-foolproof
keystroke systems… |
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Re:Other systems too? (Score:5, Informative)
by NixterAg (198468)
on Friday June 27, @06:29PM (#6315483)
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BioPassword unfortunately suffers from a habit of producing false
rejections. It really diminishes its usability. BioPassword's best
trait is that it doesn't require an additional hardware purchase to
work. Several high profile banks inspected BioPassword to determine
whether they could use it for identity authentication within the
context of online purchases. They came to the conclusion that it
wasn't usable enough.
I
think many people miss the boat when it comes to biometric identity
authentication. The fact is, any security protocol can be exploited.
The idea is to make it a protocol difficult enough to exploit so that
it isn't in the best interests of an attacker to go after whatever is
being secured. It's like cryptography. There is no unbreakable code
or cipher, but there are codes that are difficult enough to break that
it isn't worth the time or effort required to break them. |
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Re:Other systems too? (Score:2)
by Dun Malg (230075)
on Saturday June 28, @12:13PM (#6319656)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 01, @09:15PM)
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So why don't we just create a long 50000-bit key and slap it onto a magnetic-swipe card?
A huge key is unnecessary. If they have the card, they have the key. The
key exists solely to keep someone from whipping up a card with your
user ID and getting instant access. No one is going to guess your key even if it's only 128 bits.
That way, the system is only comprised when:
a) You lose the card
b) Someone threatens you at knife-point to hand the card over.
Seeing that we already have the system you describe above (sans ridiculously large key) in use for ATMs, one has to look at the purpose
of biometric authentication. Yeah, that's right: with biometric you
can't easily a) lose the "key", and b) no one can easily take it from
you at knifepoint. |
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paranoia (Score:5, Funny)
by klokwise (610755)
on Friday June 27, @06:01PM (#6315280)
(http://www.nekrodomos.net/)
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maybe i should extend my tin-foil hat to a tin-foil facemask and a pair of shiny gloves... that way they'll never recognise me!
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Re:paranoia (Score:2)
by shadowbearer (554144)
on Friday June 27, @07:41PM (#6315899)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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It' never work for me. My gait changes considerably on cold, wet days when the arthritis in my knees kicks in.
Something like that would, as someone else noted, also produce false
rejections depending on the type of shoes worn, whether your pants are
tight or loose, etc. What if you broke an ankle? Your gait would change
considerably for months as it healed up (I've spiral-fractured one, and
it was nearly a year before I could walk decently again).
But you know, I'd bet some company somewhere is already working on something like this....
SB
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Re:paranoia (Score:2)
by darnok (650458)
on Saturday June 28, @04:19AM (#6318370)
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> maybe i should extend my tin-foil hat to a tin-foil
> facemask and a pair of shiny gloves... that way
> they'll never recognise me!
Nice idea, C3PO, but I don't think you'll get away with it...
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Facial recognition (Score:1, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 27, @06:02PM (#6315286)
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...doesn't work worth a damn anyway. Other forms of biometric authentication are much more reliable.
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privacy issues aside... (Score:1)
by JW Troll (607432)
on Friday June 27, @09:54PM (#6316744)
(http://www.microsoft.com/)
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If the password can't be changed, then the corollary is that
biometrics are no good for authentication; however, they excel at
providing a convenient method of tracking/auditing provided that one cares little for security.
If
I were the marketing guy, I'd pitch it that we're all willing to trade
convenience for security - forget about the privacy issues. |
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At least a good guy discovered this (Score:1, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 27, @06:03PM (#6315296)
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I'm glad to know that someone legit found this out before it got
into the hands of those evil terrorists . Seriously, it's great that
these kinds of things are being discovered now. It just goes to show
that no matter what, things can be hacked/bypassed/etc somehow. |
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the intent of Palladium (Score:2)
by alizard (107678) <alizard@ecis.com>
on Saturday June 28, @04:01AM (#6318335)
(http://www.ecis.com/~alizard)
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is to protect Microsoft and DRM customers from the public.
Who's going to protect either MS or us?
As I understand it, X-Box was intended as a testbed for "Trustworthy Computing". A small bunch of dedicated fanatics cracked it.
How many million people are going to try to make a rep for themselves by trying to crack Palladium / TCPA, and will all of them be "good guys" who at least will let us who subscribe to BugTraq and Full Disclosure know where the security holes are?
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Re:At least a good guy discovered this (Score:2)
by Dylan Zimmerman (607218) <rgdtad.aol@com>
on Friday June 27, @07:59PM (#6315989)
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What do you mean, "a good guy discovered this"? Do you actually
think that anybody who would exploit it would TELL us that he could
exploit it? Honestly.
Biometric
identification is inherently flawed because it relies on things that
cannot easily be changed (i.e., without major surgery), but that can be
reproduced. This has been known for years. They even use similar
situations on TV shows (Paul Milander, anyone?). |
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Re:At least a good guy discovered this (Score:2)
by chundo (587998) <.jjongsma79. .at. .hotmail.com.>
on Friday June 27, @09:52PM (#6316733)
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Anything can be hacked when you're storing it in the clear. Of
course you'll be able to regenerate the template when you already know
exactly which points need to match. The solution to this "exploit" is
to run a cryptographic algorithm on the facial template before storing
it anywhere. Just like /etc/shadow...
you can provide an unencrypted facial template, encrypt it, and compare
the two results - but you can never regenerate the original from the
encrypted record (well, not without more computing power than is
realistically available).
-j
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One thing that is missing from "the spoof" (Score:5, Interesting)
by adzoox (615327) *
on Friday June 27, @06:04PM (#6315300)
(http://www.adzoox.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 02, @11:23AM)
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A local company to me, has a biometric scan + retina and thumbprint scan, but it also takes your body temp average/signature ....
the combination of the three are pretty hard, if not impossible, to
spoof. And, anyone that can, was going to break into your system
anyway. (With the VERY expensive equipment and extensive knowledge it
would take to reproduce all three) Sometimes we give criminals to much credit. Again, if it's someone
that can go through all three of those, they were going to get past the
toughest of Indiana Jones hurdles.
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Old News (Score:5, Funny)
by fobbman (131816)
on Friday June 27, @06:05PM (#6315314)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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The fallibility of biometric systems has been widely known since a scientific expose [imdb.com] was released on the topic no less than five years ago.
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RTFA (Score:1, Interesting)
by Uhh_Duh (125375)
on Friday June 27, @06:06PM (#6315318)
(http://www.glug.com/)
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You'll notice that the data is insecure so much as the database the biometric information is stored in is protected.
All
they're saying is that if they have access to that information, they
can generate something that can authenticate against it. (DUH!)
The
moral of the story is that if you don't want someone to pretend to be
Bob's face, don't give anyone access to the database that has the
information on what Bob's face looks like to the biometric scanners. /. has sure been good at wasting my time with useless news lately.
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RTFA yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
by MarcoAtWork (28889)
on Friday June 27, @06:28PM (#6315473)
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You don't understand what the article is talking about. When you
enroll in a biometric system, the system itself -doesn't- match based
on your picture, but on a 'template' which is created by taking your
standard data and performing certain destructive operations to arrive
to a much smaller 'template' which can still be used to identify you.
This
is very similar to the one-way hashing that happens with unix
passwords, only that in this case the hashing is 'lossier' so you have
'confidence scores' instead of a black/white answer.
The article
shows that given this 'hashed' value you can recreate an image that has
a good chance of not only being authenticated by the same
system/algorithm (which already should be very hard, given the one-way
nature of the templatization) =BUT= also by different systems!
It
also is really interesting how if you have access to the 'confidence
score' outputted by the recognizer, you can take arbitrary images and
blending/averaging them again come up with an image that works.
This is definitely not useless news and will have quite some implications.
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Re:RTFA yourself (Score:2)
by randyest (589159) <(ranorano) (at) (hotmail.com)>
on Friday June 27, @06:45PM (#6315584)
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I guess this is a meta-meta-RTFA, but you seem to have missed a key
point in the article (though you clearly read at least some of it --
kudos for that).
The exploit requires both the template and
(repeated) access to score results (i.e., the evaluation / matching
algorithm). The template itself is insufficient as the exploit depends
on iterative image manupulations and "hotter, warmer, cooler" feeback
from the evaluation algorithm to work.
So, although you seem to get this in your final paragraphs
(though your "also" seems to imply that this is an additional, separate
thing, while I read the FA to say the scores are an inherent need). In
any case, your earlier statements don't seem to take this into account.
Such as your UNIX password analogy, which would only be applicable if
failed password entries gave you some quantitative feedback like
"you're about 50% on that one", "nope, worse this time -- only 45% of a
real password", etc. instead of a simple "sorry." or "invalid login".
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Re:RTFA yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
by dbrutus (71639)
on Friday June 27, @07:09PM (#6315686)
(http://www.roitgroup.com/)
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Did you notice that nobody's using biometric systems that aren't
also sold to companies. All you really need is to have a front company
that says it needs a secure biometric company id system. The same
people that sold the US their system will happily sell you an exact
copy scaled down to one site. Once you own the system, you can run it
to your heart's content. You can get data off of passports and create
proper fakes at your leisure.
Total cost for piercing the false security of the system? Way to little to be a barrier to ObL.
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Re:RTFA yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
by MarcoAtWork (28889)
on Friday June 27, @08:30PM (#6316169)
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I originally thought the same, but have a look at slide 15, the researcher says:
'Access to templates OR match scores implies access to biometric sample image' (emphasis mine)
I
originally thought that you needed both, but after re-reading the
presentation a few times it seems the researcher has -TWO- different
exploits, one which regenerates things from the biometric data (samples
not shown) and the other which takes arbitrary pics and by using the
match percentage iterates a few times until it finds something that
passes.
If I misunderstood and you need both things, please correct me.
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Yikes! (Score:2, Informative)
by ackthpt (218170) *
on Friday June 27, @06:08PM (#6315332)
(http://www.dragonswest.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 23, @10:22PM)
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This
means that legislation gets passed to require hundreds of millions of
people to have their biometrics encoded onto their passports.
So this means that spotty, streaky photo of me (or is it a dog ..
a wombat maybe?) on the back of my CostCo membership card isn't safe!
Just about anyone could march in the door, past their regorously
trained staff and buy Boca Burgers for half off! Someone showed
me a fake driver's license made by a "novelty" company. The only
distinguishable difference was a missing apostrophe in the text on the
reverse. It had holograms and everything. Thoughtfully, the company
stated, "This is only for amusement value, illegal to use as ID", etc.
Yeah, that should cover it. |
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The solution: store biometric data on a Java Card (Score:1, Insightful)
by ikewillis (586793)
on Friday June 27, @06:09PM (#6315344)
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I think this only further proves the need for something like a Java Card [sun.com]
(btw, I don't work for Sun)
A Java Card would allow you to store information (in this case
biometric data) in a way that the data could be used in some sort of
transformation but the original data is protected. Were biometric data to be included on Passports, I see no
better way to store it than in a Java Card. Portions of the biometric
data analysis could be offloaded onto the Java Card itself, until an
acceptable and mutual balance of trust and distrust can be achieved
between the biometric processing algorithms and the data on the Java
Card. In this way the biometric data is never exposed directly to the
outside world, so one need not worry about it getting leaked to the
"bad guys" even if your passport were stolen. |
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Re:The solution: store biometric data on a Java Ca (Score:2)
by jetmarc (592741)
on Friday June 27, @08:10PM (#6316042)
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> In this way the biometric data is never exposed directly to the outside world, so one
> need not worry about it getting leaked to the "bad guys" even if your passport were stolen. ..except of course, when the JavaCard can be used as an oracle by the attacker.
Note that in the article they did not use any reference to the original image
or to the dataset that the face recognition software creates from it. They rather
chose 30 different (visually not related) images and then evolutionary selected
the best fit.
As soon as your JavaCard is going to be universal (and serve multiple purposes
with varying degree of security) it has to return a "score" (rather than a yes/no
decision). And nothing more than that very score is used by the attack, go figure.
To put this into a real world example: imagine you use an ATM JavaCard with face
recognition. Insert card, present your face into the cam lens, and enter how
much money you need. Now a computer nerd "finds" your card. He emulates an ATM
terminal to the card and presents a random face to the card. Recursively, he
optimizes it according to the article until he achieves a "good enough" score.
He prints that out on paper, and travels to Mexico - slowly, by car, doing a stop
at every damn biometrics-enabled ATM he can find. Heck, even the security cam
recordings provide no more evidence than a fake (still image) phantom photo of
YOU!
Marc
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Re:The solution: store biometric data on a Java Ca (Score:2)
by Cthefuture (665326)
on Friday June 27, @10:18PM (#6316870)
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As
soon as your JavaCard is going to be universal (and serve multiple
purposes with varying degree of security) it has to return a "score"
(rather than a yes/no decision).
Eh? I understand the part
about being able to use a score to slowly converge on a working
template, but that's not the way any smartcard I've seen works.
I've
never worked with a card that returned a score. The biometric template
is instead used like a PIN, it either unlocks the card or not and the
card determines that. When the card is unlocked it then authenticates
in a traditional manner (usually a standard public key, RSA or
whatever). In other words, the biometric template unlocks the private
key. Note that no private data is ever read off the card, everything
is done on-card.
When you're talking smartcards, it's not the
client application that determines the security level. Normally it's
the card that determines if you've passed all the security criteria.
Hence smart card.
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Does the database depend on obscurity? (Score:3, Insightful)
by astrashe (7452) *
on Friday June 27, @06:10PM (#6315350)
(http://slashdot.org/...id=31489&cid=3388020 | Last Journal: Friday June 20, @05:46PM)
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I've been curious about these databases and how they work. They
have to take the images and proces them, presumably into some sort of
n-tuple. And then they database that.
But
how will they handle changes? I mean, people will probably figure out
how the recognition works, and learn how to trick it. If you know the
scheme, it probably wouldn't be too hard.
If they have a giant
database of these n-tuples, generated from photos, will they have to
recrunch every photo in the db when they want to improve the system, or
respond to holes that emerge? I guess they'll have a lot of computer
power, so it's probably not too bad.
The thing that worries me
about this stuff is the possibility that the crooks and terrorists will
be able to defeat it trivially, but the average citizen will be tracked
everywhere he or she goes. |
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x10 Get your Biometric Face Master Template (Score:3, Funny)
by bugsmalli (638337)
on Friday June 27, @06:10PM (#6315351)
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**Guy snooping on a girl sunbathing**
Want to snoop on your neighbor?? Want to trespass?? Want to know if there are Aliens at Area 51???
GET YOUR OWN BIOMETRIC FACE MASTER TEMPLATE. Guaranteed to
*FOOL* all Biometric Scanners. Get the *NEW* and *IMPROVED* BIOMETRIC
FACE MASTER TEMPLATE from X10. It will even fool our OWN SECURITY
CAMERA!!! Our NEW special offer, buy one BFMT and get PRE-APPROVED Bail
for FREE (good for 5000 dollars) ORDER NOW!!! |
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Am I reading the description incorrectly? (Score:1)
by EdgeShadow (665410)
on Friday June 27, @06:12PM (#6315365)
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Unfortunately,
biometric templates are currently considered to be non-identifiable,
much like a password hash. This means that legislation gets passed to
require hundreds of millions of people to have their biometrics encoded
onto their passports.
Those two statements seem to be
contradictory. If biometric templates are considered to be
"non-identifiable" (much like lie-detector tests are inadmissable in
court due to unreliability), why would legislation be passed to require
them to be used in passports? A United States passport is often
considered the most reliable form of identification for a U.S. citizen.
I don't see why the government would risk compromising the passport's
reliability by incorporating into it a supposed "unreliable"
technology. |
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Sounds easy to fix... (Score:2)
by hpa (7948)
on Friday June 27, @06:17PM (#6315396)
(http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/)
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Unlike all the *other* problems with biometrics, like false
positives/false negatives/gelatin sheet spoofing, showing the camera a
photograph, etc., this one seems like it should be easy to solve: don't
store the biometric data, instead, treat it like a password and store a
cryptographic hash of it instead.
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Re:Sounds easy to fix... (Score:2, Insightful)
by jonatha (204526)
on Friday June 27, @06:57PM (#6315634)
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Unlike all the *other* problems with biometrics, like false
positives/false negatives/gelatin sheet spoofing, showing the camera a
photograph, etc., this one seems like it should be easy to solve: don't
store the biometric data, instead, treat it like a password and store a
cryptographic hash of it instead.
The paper explicitly covers encryption, etc., of the data.
Any system that uses the data to decide whether or not the
presented (fake) pattern matches the template is subject to this
attack, i.e., hashing the data won't help. |
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Re:Sounds easy to fix... (Score:1)
by eric256 (625188)
on Friday June 27, @07:51PM (#6315954)
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Actualy its saying that if you have access to the template
(unencrypted) then you can reconstruct the image from that. Its also
saying that if the system gives a % of how close you are then that can
be used to average out an initial picture until it provides a close
enough match. Both of these could be handled by one-way hashing the
stored template and then only giving a yes/no answer. Though then the
hash of a template generated by a persons image must be consitently
perfect, so that everytime it id's you it recreates the template,
hashes it, and searches for that in the dbase.
I
think some sort of video/infrared system would work better. Of course
it would be much harder. Then you could weight there movement/facial
expresions/temperature match. Much harder to fool than a simple image.
After all you can't hold a picture up to an infared camera and expect
it to work too well.
Of course it should also be noted that any
system can be broken, includeing ALL current identification systems. So
its realy a matter of is this better or worse than our current methods.
Just my thoughts.
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Re:Sounds easy to fix... (Score:2, Informative)
by robindmorris (682328)
on Friday June 27, @07:03PM (#6315656)
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If you bothered to RTFA (I know, this is /.),
you would find that this exploit does not need access to the biometric
data, instead it only needs access to the scoring function.
Put simply:
1. start with some random face
2. ask the system to compute the recognition score for this face
3. make changes to the face
4. compute the new score
5. if the score is higher, keep the change to the face, if the score is lower, reject the change
6. goto 3
You'll
notice that nowhere do you have to look at the biometric data itself.
You only have to ask the system to compute the recognition score (for
which it comes with a handy api).
Actually, this idea is so
brilliantly simple, that I'm annoyed that I didn't think of it myself
(it relates closely to a bunch of work I've done on image
reconstruction. |
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Re:Thank god! (Score:1)
by robindmorris (682328)
on Friday June 27, @08:04PM (#6316006)
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Ah, mention the DMCA and get modded up... You don't need to break
the law to exploit this. You only need to make api calls to the public
api of the recognition system. It's all spelled out in the article. |
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Hash the data (Score:2)
by booch (4157) <[moc.kehcubgiarc] [ta] [todhsals]>
on Friday June 27, @06:18PM (#6315404)
(http://craigbuchek.com/)
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I'm not sure if it's possible, since the face-recognition data
probably has to be "fuzzy". But if there's any data that is exact, you
could just hash that.
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Re:Hash the data (Score:1)
by robindmorris (682328)
on Friday June 27, @07:05PM (#6315670)
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As I said in a reply to an earlier comment:
(cut and pasted...)
If you bothered to RTFA (I know, this is /.),
you would find that this exploit does not need access to the biometric
data, instead it only needs access to the scoring function.
Put simply:
1. start with some random face
2. ask the system to compute the recognition score for this face
3. make changes to the face
4. compute the new score
5. if the score is higher, keep the change to the face, if the score is lower, reject the change
6. goto 3
You'll
notice that nowhere do you have to look at the biometric data itself.
You only have to ask the system to compute the recognition score (for
which it comes with a handy api). |
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Joe Average User... (Score:5, Interesting)
by Greyfox (87712)
on Friday June 27, @06:19PM (#6315411)
(http://www.flying-rhenquest.net/)
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Is going to be awfully put out when the authorities hold him because
someone with his biometric pattern did soemthing highly illegal. He will be in the position of being assumed guilty because
everyone know that biometrics don't lie and are completely infallable.
Thanks to legislation like the DMCA, no one will testify that the
systems are, indeed, very easy to compromise. It'll be illegal to talk
about those aspects of security. Not that the law has ever stopped the
black hats... |
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Re:Joe Average User... (Score:2)
by Akardam (186995)
on Friday June 27, @06:53PM (#6315615)
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Testifying about the system's ease of comprimise is entirely
different from trying to bust some guy with a cast iron alabi, and
trust me, it will happen. All the sooner if it's someone high profile,
like a congressmonkey or star athlete or actor. At that point, the
system's falability will have to be questioned, and once it is, every
case after will have the defense scrambling to cite Senator Bob vs. BioID Ltd..
This is also another reason why people will always remain in the
identification equasion for the forseeable future, at least until a
computer can say "Gee, Mr. Bob, you're a few inches shorter then whence
I saw you last". |
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Re:Joe Average User... (Score:3, Interesting)
by Poeir (637508)
on Friday June 27, @09:39PM (#6316665)
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Alphonse Bertillon advanced a system which would provide "unique"
identification by taking measurements of various bones throughout the
body. In 1903, two prisoners at the same facility were found to have
almost identical Bertillion measurements, and the system was more or
less scrapped. Modern facial recognition systems work in a matter
similar to the Bertillion one, by comparing the ratio/measurement
between various components of the face, like eyes, ears, nose, et
cetera.
Sir Francis Galton's work regarding fingerprints superceded the Bertillion system, and even that has shown some weaknesses [itworld.com]. Overall, biometrics do not appear to be as secure as one would expect to me.
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why passports at all? (Score:1, Interesting)
by civilengineer (669209)
on Friday June 27, @06:21PM (#6315422)
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With this kind of technology (biometrics), the need for passport should be eliminated, right?
A machine should look into you eye and make sure you are genuine, eliminating the need for a passport.
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Not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
by Henry V .009 (518000) <marstrail&hotmail,com>
on Friday June 27, @06:27PM (#6315460)
(http://thrasymachus.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Monday January 06, @02:06PM)
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Anyone who has done work on computer vision would have guessed this
to be so. What would interest me is in how it would be possible to
exploit the algorithms, i.e., how bad of a picture can you get away
with? Certain images that might not look anything like a face to you
or me will quite possibly be able to fool the system.
The passport angle is probably a red herring though. The unreliability
of photo identification is already known. Identity theft is simple and
easy. Hell, here in New Mexico, we've already been the first state to
accept 'Matricula Consular' cards as valid ID for driver's licenses.
Matricula Consular cards, of course, are given out by Mexican embassies
to undocumented Mexicans living in the US. By 'undocumented,' I mean
illegal, of course. Check out the immigration reform site
www.vdare.com for some more information on the subject. |
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Biometrics 101 (Score:2, Interesting)
by stupendou (466135)
on Friday June 27, @06:28PM (#6315465)
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While this is an interesting expolit, the sky isn't falling. Any and
all biometric systems can be exploited, and in similar ways.
However,
for this particular exploit to affect passport security and the like,
the entire system would have to be automated, so that there would be no
one to notice the perpetrator was holding a photo of someone else in
front of his face as he walked by.
To guard against exploits
like these in totally automated systems, the data that is fed into the
matching system should be digitally signed, so that it is clear where
the data is coming from
(e.g. a real fingerprint sensor, etc.).
Even
so, a fake face or a fake finger can indeed spoof many biometric
systems. Luckily, border crossings and airport security has humans in
the loop to prevent these kind of exploits (or to accept bribes to
allow them!).
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Re:Biometrics 101 (Score:1)
by michaeljthieme (685202)
on Friday June 27, @09:46PM (#6316706)
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This study is interesting, and there are probably some severe
implications for vendors. However biometric templates are NOT going to
be stored on passports. Biometric *images* are - definitely face,
potentially also fingerprint and iris. ICAO (International Civil
Aviation Organization) establishes these standards; they also determine
the layout, data formats, etc of physical passports. A country can
decide not to go along with ICAO recommendations but that is unlikely.
So if one can read the data on the new "biometric" passports, one would
be reading images, not templates. |
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Ident-i-Eeze (Score:2, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 27, @06:28PM (#6315468)
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There were so many different ways in
which you were required to provide absolute proof of your iden-
tity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome
just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential
problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an
epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash
point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around
waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits
of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant
(or nearly instant - a good six or seven seconds in tedious
reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions
about members of their family they didn't even remember they
had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours.
And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If
you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty
or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.
Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of
information about you, your body and your life into one all-
purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around
in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest
triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.
Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless
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How to fix the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
by Atario (673917)
on Friday June 27, @06:30PM (#6315486)
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Make
the cameras use x-ray backscattering (as in the earlier story today) of
your face. Then in order to spoof the system, a printout of your
picture (generated from the hash or not) would not work -- you'd have
to build something that recreates your x-ray backscatter and show that
to the camera. (I'm assuming that would be much more difficult, like
making a sculpture out of meat or something -- anyone in the know wish
to shoot down my theory?)
Of course, then there's the issue of getting x-rayed in the face every time you walk in the door...
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Re:How to fix the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
by agrippa_cash (590103)
on Friday June 27, @06:44PM (#6315576)
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Or some face topography scheme (IR distance sensors etc...), or make
people turn their head so that the computer has to validate x number of
positions between a frontal and quarter profile. Thermal is too easy
to fool. No doubt these methods also could be fooled and likely
sucessfully reversed as well. But the more complicated the
verification, the more complicated circumvention will have to be. It
appears that the currenet scheme is easier to circumvent than
impliment. |
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Sorry, not comparatively hard (Score:3, Interesting)
by mattr (78516) <<moc.ydobelet> <ta> <rttam>>
on Saturday June 28, @12:29AM (#6317504)
(http://telebody.com | Last Journal: Tuesday July 30, @08:28AM)
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Nope, check out this [3dsystems.com].
An associate of mine runs a small factory in Japan where they make
3d-printers, much of the technology is from Texas-based DTM. Can't find
their homepage, I think they might be owned or were by BFGoodrich. Many
companies use their Sinterstation, which uses a laser to fuse nylon or
metal powder deposited in thin layers inside the production bay. The machines are I believe in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars each but they are used to make prototypes like mobile phone
shells, or molds as for experimental automotive parts. Anyway nylon is easy, but they also have a rapidsteel process
and the holy grail I understand is titanium, which would allow you to
create surgical implants like joint replacements. As you can see in the
link above, you can already pretty easily produce a 3d model of your
skull from Cat-scan tomography. I've only seen plastic versions, though
they might be more appropriate to trying to mimic x-ray backscatter
from bone, and much cheaper than going through the trouble of making a
mold, pouring metal, and finishing it. Hospitals are probably a lot
easier to penetrate than these biometric systems. Come to think of it,
you could skip the biometric penetration and just use anthropological
techniques to build a face over the skull based on known data about
skin depth at different parts of the skull. Painting surface features
based on a pictures taken with a telephoto lens would also be cheap
compared to the price tag mentioned in this thread for biometric
analysis equipment. |
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So let me guess (Score:1)
by curtlewis (662976)
on Friday June 27, @06:31PM (#6315498)
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A photo of the person held up to the facial recognition camera passes the test?
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Not as significant as you might think (Score:5, Insightful)
by swillden (191260) *
on Friday June 27, @06:33PM (#6315513)
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This
isn't such a big deal for face recognition systems, because face
recognition systems suck at identifying people anyway. Why? First a
little tereminology: With any biometric matcher you have to define a match
"tolerance", which defines how close a pair of templates (usually one
from a database and one from a livescan) have to be before they're
considered to be a match. Set this tolerance too "loose" and you get
lots of false positives (matches that shouldn't match), set it too
"tight" and you get the opposite, false negatives. The tolerance
setting where you get roughly the same number of errors each way is
called the equal error point, and the error rate is called the equal
error rate (abbreviated ERR for some unfathomable reason). Well, all current face recognition systems have an ERR that is
too high to be useful in nearly any situation, even when used for
identity verification, as opposed to the much-harder problem of
identification (verification: I say I'm Bill Gates, and the system
agrees; identification: The system says I'm Bill Gates, not RMS or
anyone else). It's possible that in the future this will change, of
course. However, this doesn't really matter because we already have
ready access to an excellent and very widely available face recognition
system: the Mark I eyeball. Millions of years of evolution have made
people extremely good at identifying and matching human faces. What
people aren't so good at (with notable exceptions) is matching a face
against a database of thousands of faces they've seen only once, and
*that* is something that face recognition systems can do extremely
well. They may not be able to decide which faces are a "match", but
they can do an excellent job of finding the *closest* faces, which can
then be reviewed by the super-duper face-matching algorithm contained
in the average person's head. When automated face recognition is used in that sort of
context, spoofs like this one are unlikely to be very useful; if you
want to impersonate someone you'd better get a face that's good enough
to fool another human. It's doable, certainly, but much harder. And
holding a laptop screen in front of your face is likely to raise some
suspicions. |
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Re:Not as significant as you might think (Score:2)
by Jasin Natael (14968)
on Saturday June 28, @06:28PM (#6321590)
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Yeah, yeah. That's what they said about handwriting. Oh, wait. They were right. Maybe I'm agreeing with you.
Just
like my beloved Apple Newton -- It got the handwriting right 98% of the
time, but for the other 2%, you'd find yourself double-tapping the word
to see what else it thought you might have written. I'd be
surprised to learn that this isn't the way most firms are implementing
the technology. After all, "Blocks more than 98% of intruders" isn't a
great advertising slogan unless you plan to use another system to back
up that 2%.
To sum up: You'll probably see it used in
non-critical places (like advertisements), as supplementary ID (like at
an ATM, but you'll still need your PIN), and as an entertainment
enhancement (your TV recognizing who's in the room and recommending
shows everyone is likely to enjoy). Just don't use it to lock your
car, and certainly don't deploy it at work unless there's a real brain behind it.
--Jasin Natael
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Better Than (Score:3, Funny)
by somethinghollow (530478)
on Friday June 27, @06:39PM (#6315551)
(http://www.somethinghollow.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 30, @01:49AM)
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At least I don't have to cut someone's fingers off/eyes out/head
off/etc. to get past these types of security measures any more.
Whew! What a relief.
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Yo' Mama's So Ugly... (Score:1, Offtopic)
by sbillard (568017)
on Friday June 27, @06:46PM (#6315587)
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Yo mama's so ugly, she made the face recog system halt
Yo mama's so ugly, they use her face to stamp out gorilla cookies (Thanks Red Fox)
Yo mama's so ugly, you could hear the face recog cameras scream.
Yo mama's so ugly, when you brought her on the plane, they made you check your bag.
Yo mama's so ugly, she made Medusa's snakes turn to stone.
*_ducks and covers_*
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One to one relationship / pigeonhole principle (Score:2)
by zerofoo (262795)
on Friday June 27, @06:47PM (#6315595)
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Devices like this can NEVER be used for personal identification
unless a one to one relationship between a face recognition template
and the person can be mathematicaly proven.
Much
like a hashing algorithm (and the pigeonhole principle) if two items
can hash to the same spot, then the algorithm is broken; or in this
instance two people look alike and the computer can't tell them apart.
This will keep algorithms guys busy for a while.
-ted
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Re:One to one relationship / pigeonhole principle (Score:2)
by awol (98751)
on Friday June 27, @07:44PM (#6315913)
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Much
like a hashing algorithm (and the pigeonhole principle) if two items
can hash to the same spot, then the algorithm is broken; or in this
instance two people look alike and the computer can't tell them apart.
Er, actually no. Hashing two templates to the same key is not
evidence of a broken algorithm as long as some of a whole range of
other factors can be used to "work" the collision. In particular you
want the algorithm to return an even distribution accross the key space
and even more particularly yuou do not want similar faces to hash to
similar keys, that is a sign of a potentially broken algorithm. The
trade off is keyspace size versus computational complexity (and the
range of factors like non stochastic key mapping and keyspace
coverage). So for example if you hash the faced independent of skin
colour, and eye colour (not the best but what the hey) then when you
got the collision you could store those metrics with the template to
allow for the more detailed comparison to be performed. Thus if
dissimialr faces hash to the same key, you could easily have a factor
of ten in the keyspace and still easily identify different faces.
Having said that, the discovery of the hashing process is where the difficulty lies and that ain't my area.
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Re:One to one relationship / pigeonhole principle (Score:2)
by zerofoo (262795)
on Sunday June 29, @02:51PM (#6325948)
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I agree the algorithm isn't necessarily broken. Every hash i've ever coded needs some way to handle collisions.
The
difficulty is getting that elusive differentiating data from a face.
Obviously if a human can tell apart two faces, then there must be a way
to create two different facial templates.
The article shows that
the reverse is true. The authors could reconstruct the face from an
image template. I didn't go deeply into the math, but it does actually
look like a one to one process (i.e. one template did not result in two
possible images).
-ted
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Biometrics are the visual equivalent of soundex (Score:2)
by mikeophile (647318)
on Friday June 27, @06:49PM (#6315598)
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I'm guessing that the these biometric template could misidentify people that look quite different to a human observer.
For instance, if she had a little less facial hair, my aunt's bouffant
hairdo under a scarf might give her the same biometric as Osama bin
Laden. |
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Frequent changes... (Score:2)
by Pettifogger (651170)
on Friday June 27, @06:49PM (#6315600)
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For some reason, I don't think biometric face scans would hold up in
Hollywood (well, Los Angeles for that matter) very well. Having lived
there, people's faces just seem to keep changing. And so do hair and
eye colors. It's almost like a hobby for some people. |
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Reset (Score:1)
by jabbadabbadoo (599681)
on Friday June 27, @06:56PM (#6315627)
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How to reset a biometric system? Show it a picture of CowboyNeal.
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has the professor been arrested... (Score:1)
by u19925 (613350)
on Friday June 27, @06:59PM (#6315643)
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under DMCA (what else)?
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beneath your current threshold.
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Pattern recognition software for the military? (Score:1)
by ratfynk (456467)
on Friday June 27, @07:18PM (#6315745)
(Last Journal: Friday June 27, @02:15PM)
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It is interesting that the US military just purchased 800 million
plus worth of software licences from Redmond. I hope they are not
planning on using MS spaghetti code for mission critical security aps
that use pattern recogniton code.
Bin Laden might win the war. Especially if they install Windows media player anywhere in their networks!
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Gee (Score:1)
by The Metahacker (3507)
on Friday June 27, @07:20PM (#6315766)
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This is a big problem. not. Just take the data and push it through a
one-way hash (like the aforementioned password transformation) before
encoding it on the card.
TMH
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Re:Gee (Score:2)
by swordgeek (112599)
on Friday June 27, @07:36PM (#6315864)
(Last Journal: Monday May 05, @07:46PM)
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Great. And then we'll go back to the OLD method, of recreating faces from pictures of people.
Visual
or at least optical biometrics are a disaster. Anyone (including
government agencies) who think otherwise will end up getting in trouble
by it.
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Re:Gee (Score:1)
by eric256 (625188)
on Friday June 27, @07:57PM (#6315978)
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Heres an idea that just occured to me. Use two cameras in tandem,
spaced a couple inches apart to give you a depth analysis as well.
Harder to fool, and you can't just use a picture. It would have to be a
full blown model.
Or
even better. Dual Cameras with Optical and Infared Capabilities (and
audio) captureing the person saying a pass phrase "I am joe." One-way
Hash all the data into the system and use that.
You could even
hash the audio and video seperate so that a head injury or a cold
wouldn't lock you out, or just have a guard to let those people pass.
Well you get the idea. Any thoughts?
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Re:Gee (Score:1)
by eric256 (625188)
on Monday June 30, @11:05AM (#6330874)
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Ah. Yea I heard about those a while back. Frensel lenses basicaly.
Yea I suppose that would fool it. Thats why I also included thermal
imageing. (maybe a different post.) Either way any system is foolable.
Its just a question of how bad it is. :-)
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How to beat a fingerprint scanner (Score:1, Troll)
by biostatman (105993)
on Friday June 27, @07:22PM (#6315776)
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Breathe on the glass sensor to get the outline of the last person's
print. Will fool many systems if the previous print was authorized.
(Read this in the economist a couple of weeks ago...)
A bit OT, but thought others might find this interesting. Please don't let the DMCA dogs loose on me.
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Links lost... (Score:2)
by joeytsai (49613)
on Friday June 27, @07:24PM (#6315793)
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I remember reading an article (possibly from here) about the
challenges facial recognition systems faced, in particular comparing
the facilities in the human brain. It had very interesting examples,
for instance showing only a mouth and chin, but even with just that
information, most people recognized it as Julia Roberts. They also
altered a picture of Clinton and Gore but switched their mouths,
something again that everyone notices but that a computer would have a
very hard time picking up on. Finally, they also just had a grid of
pictures, shrunk to 12x12 pixels, and even with that little data, your
brain can easily discern who the pictures belong to. I'd like to look
at that article again, would anybody know the link? |
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Everyone has missed the point (Score:5, Informative)
by SiliconEntity (448450)
on Friday June 27, @07:29PM (#6315818)
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Every comment I have read has missed the point!
This
is not an exploit designed to show that biometric systems can be fooled
or that you could create some kind of fake image that would match an
existing one.
The whole point is that this shows that biometric
templates are privacy-sensitive. Previously it was thought that they
could be stored and promulgated without interfering with anyone's
privacy, because it was thought to be infeasible to start from the
template and reconstruct personally identifiable information about the
subject.
The new paper shows that this is not true; from the
templates, you can reconstruct an identifiable picture of the
individual. That means that, for example, if you had a bunch of
templates of people who went in for an AIDS test, you could re-create
pictures of the people who went in, adequate to recognize individuals.
This
would therefore interfere with the privacy of those individuals. And
that implies that templates need to be subject to the same kind of
privacy restrictions as other forms of personally identifying
information, a standard to which they have not traditionally been held.
And that's the point of the paper.
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Re:Everyone has missed the point (Score:1)
by stupendou (466135)
on Friday June 27, @09:35PM (#6316643)
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The whole point is that this shows that biometric templates are
privacy-sensitive. Previously it was thought that they could be stored
and promulgated without interfering with anyone's privacy, because it
was thought to be infeasible to start from the template and reconstruct
personally identifiable information about the subject.
No one in the biometrics industry ever thought that!
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Simple algorithm. It works. (Score:4, Insightful)
by jetmarc (592741)
on Friday June 27, @07:37PM (#6315873)
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The algorithm they used is simple. They use the face recognition
system as "oracle" and present different images until the match
is achieved. The different images are not chosen at random, but
rather evolutionary. That is, a selection of images is presented,
and the best (highest score) is chosen. Recursively, new selections
are derived from the best image, and again presented to the oracle.
According to the article 24,000 images are necessary to achieve
convergence, when the initial images were specifically chosen to
NOT be visually similar to the "target" image.
Some oracles can't be questionned 24,000 times - eg at an airport
or an ATM machine. You might become arrested long before finished.
However, often press releases indicate which company designed the
software for a particular implentation of face recognition. You
can easily purchase other software of the same company (or find
an OEM product) and thus have the same (or very similar) oracle
on your desk at home. There you can do the 24,000 iterations to
get ahold of the "good" image and then proceed to remodel your
face or whatever way you intend to "present" the image to the
real face recognition system.
In my opinion, biometrics just doesn't work for security. Because
everyone is open to see the datasets.
Just look at those stupid press releases of Siemens/Infineon, who
make high-payed security engineers invent ATM cards with finger
print sensors. Owners finger print => money from ATM. Where does
owner leave his finger print, when handling the card? Couldn't be
on the very ATM card, possibly?
Acceptable security requires
a) something you have, and
b) something you know.
When the item you have is stolen, the thief lacks the information
you know. And vice-versa, when the secret is learned (eg shoulder
surfing at ATM), the item you have still misses to complete the
electronic robbery.
Biometrics is something you have, not something you know. That is
the key thing to learn here!
It can be copied, without your noticing, but that doesn't make it
category b). It still is something you have, because everybody has
access to it when he's physically near to you. You can't just shut
up to make it stay secret.
Therefore, biometrics won't (ever) work as long as it's coupled with
other category a) stuff. A biometric dataset can possibly replace a
physical token, but it can NOT replace a PIN code.
I'm happy that this is once again demonstrated, with press coverage.
Marc
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Re:Simple algorithm. It works. (Score:1)
by stupendou (466135)
on Friday June 27, @09:33PM (#6316625)
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>Biometrics is something you have, not something you >know. That is
> the key thing to learn here!
No. Biometrics is something you *are*. A card
or other token is something you have. A password is something you know. They are all distinct and can all be used together.
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Re:Simple algorithm. It works. (Score:1)
by ksni (684287)
on Saturday June 28, @02:17AM (#6318010)
(Last Journal: Tuesday June 24, @04:42PM)
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I beg to differ on the point: "A biometric dataset can possibly
replace a physical token, but it can NOT replace a PIN code."
A
UK based ATM implementation using IRIS technology used cards with no
pin and worked very well. The token is the the 'involved party'
indentifier that provides context and limitation for iris presentation.
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Easily fixed (Score:1)
by afidel (530433)
on Friday June 27, @07:38PM (#6315875)
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Just check for thermal patterns, most CCD's used for image
recognition can see near infra-red so just check to see if the image is
a person with a pulse. A piece of paper isn't going to give off heat
like a person does =) |
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Re:Easily fixed (Score:1)
by NivekEnterprises (309259)
on Saturday June 28, @11:01AM (#6319335)
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Depending on the syphistication of the machinery you are probably
right, but you could keep the paper up against your skin (e.g against
your stomach) and when you pull it out to show it to the copmuter it
would still have the heat from your body. |
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Re:Easily fixed (Score:2)
by afidel (530433)
on Friday June 27, @09:05PM (#6316467)
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I did read the paper, my solution solves the first problem presented
(outwitting the system) but does not solve the second. The second is
really less of a real world problem because most systems store an
actual photos and other information about a person, not just their ID
mask. Compromising the database in those cases would give much more
than trying to reverse the algorithm to get a rough picture of a
person. |
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Not Surprising In Ottawa (Score:2, Funny)
by Synesthesiatic (679680) *
on Friday June 27, @07:46PM (#6315923)
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A couple of decades ago Ottawa was the world's coldest capital city
(I forget what it is now). The saying goes that come it's impossible to
tell people apart, because everyone's wearing parkas. Now there's a
challenge for facial recognition! |
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Re:Not Surprising In Ottawa (Score:2)
by JohnnyCannuk (19863)
on Friday June 27, @08:49PM (#6316334)
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Flamebait?
As
a resident of Ottawa, I can say this is true...really! It's actally
rather insightful. From January to March here your only like to see the
tip of someone's nose, as the rest of your face is (and should be)
covered by parkas, touques, belaclavas or scarves.
Facial recognition biometrics would never be used here for that very reason
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yahoo biometrics listserv (Score:1, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 27, @08:49PM (#6316338)
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I think all these comments are very interesting, and would like to
invite those of you with a continuing interest in the subject to join
the yahoo biometrics group.
Go to http:\\groups.yahoo.com\groups\biometrics
and
follow the links to join. The listserv is open, you can select various
email delivery options, and you can hide your email address if you
choose.
Cheers
The yahoo biometrics group moderator
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Not anything like a password hash (Score:5, Informative)
by lkaos (187507) <anthony@NOSpam.codemonkey.ws>
on Friday June 27, @09:03PM (#6316452)
(http://lbpp.sourceforge.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 23, @08:14PM)
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A useful password hash (at least one that isn't considered to be
plain-text equivalent) is a cryptographic hash. A cryptographic hash
is one thought to be np-hard.
For instance, take this simple hash:
uint32_t hash;
for (size_t i=0; i < str.length(); i++) {
hash += str[i];
}
Given
an input of say, foobar, one would get a hash of 633. Now, if I start
with an arbitrary password of say, google, I get a hash of 637.
Since
I know that slight adjustments to the word, produce slight differences,
I know that I can just start moving letters one space down the alphabet
until I find a matching value.
Lets say I choose:
google -} 637
foogle -} 636
fnogle -} 635
fnngle -} 634
fnnfle -} 633 *bingo*
So
know I've successfully "exploited" this password protection mechanism..
This is why it's referred to as plain-text equivalent.
A
cryptographic hash though has the interesting proper that a small
change results in a unpredictable different. For instance, in the same
example you might get:
google -} 3453
foogle -} 234543
fnogle -} 234
fnngle -} 23425434
fnnfle -} 53424 ...
There's
no reason biometrics can't be cryptographically strong. It's just that
the algorithms currently being aren't. That's no big news for anyone
with even half a clue stick. |
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Re:Not anything like a password hash (Score:2)
by WNight (23683)
on Saturday June 28, @07:08PM (#6321787)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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The problem is that passwords are an all or nothing. "google" works "goofle" does not. There's no hint.
Biometric
systems however supply a score. If password systems did this you crack
then like this... If the password is "aaaa" and you first try "mmmm"
it'll (let's say) give a score of 50. So you try "mmma" and "mmmz" and
see which one gives the highest score. The first would give 62.5% and
the second would be 37.5%, so you'd stick with the first and you'd make
another change.
With biometrics this is like showing it a
standard face and getting a score. Then raising the cheekbones and
trying again, then widening the nose, and so on. See how to change
things to get closer to a match.
You know how they crack ATM
codes in the movies? Where all the numbers change randomly, but then
they "get" a digit, and then another, etc... Passwords don't work this
way because there's no way to tell if a given character is correct
without getting the whole thing right. Biometrics let you solve a piece
at a time.
What this is equivalent to is the master-key problem from a month or two ago.
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Oh, really? Didn't Roger Wilco already do this? (Score:4, Funny)
by willith (218835)
on Friday June 27, @09:10PM (#6316487)
(http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/)
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"He developed an algorithm which allows a fairly high quality image
of a person to be regenerated from a face recognition template..."
This
kinda reminds me of the part in Space Quest III, where you gain access
to the restricted area inside ScumSoft by holding up a xeroxed picture
of the CEO's face to the facial recognition scanner. |
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Re:I don't have one, do you? (Score:1, Flamebait)
by BetterThanCaesar (625636)
on Friday June 27, @06:38PM (#6315543)
(http://caesar.mine.nu/)
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And,
as luck would have it, the rest of the world is very satisfied with you
not having any intention of travelling outside of the US.
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Re:I don't have one, do you? (Score:2, Insightful)
by warloch71 (535769)
on Friday June 27, @06:47PM (#6315590)
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Last time I checked, you didn't need a passport to fly within the US, to buy a car, to rent a movie...big deal I say.
You DO know that Planet Earth doesn't stop at the US border, don't you ?
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Re:I don't have one, do you? (Score:1)
by NotQuiteReal (608241)
on Friday June 27, @08:10PM (#6316038)
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I have a passport, but it is long expired. Without the passport, I
have been to Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas. I suppose there are places
I might like to go to that require a passport, but there are far more
that require a passport that I have no desire to visit. Meanwhile, plenty of people visit and permenantly inhabit my state
(California) without out passports from their (non-USA) countries of
origin just fine.
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beneath your current threshold.
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Re:I don't have one, do you? (Score:2)
by dbrutus (71639)
on Friday June 27, @07:15PM (#6315728)
(http://www.roitgroup.com/)
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Some of us have relatives, girlfriends, and business partners who
are going to get caught up in this mess even if we ourselves don't
travel past any borders.
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Re:i disagree (Score:1)
by Borg_5x8 (547287) <slashdot&fracturedreality,co,uk>
on Saturday June 28, @01:41PM (#6320044)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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Yes they are [reference.com], it's the name of the digit that's opposable.
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beneath your current threshold. |
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