Biometric Identification [presentation]
Biometric identification is getting more common – borders, phones, doors. But I argue that it is not by itself a good approach. I tried to explain this in a short talk, and here are the slides
Biometric features can’t be changed, can’t be revoked – they are there forever. If someone gets hold of them (and that happens sooner or later), we are screwed. And now that we use our fingerprints to unlock our phones, for example, and at the same time we use our phone as the universal “2nd factor” for most online services, including e-banking in some cases, fraud is waiting to happen (or already happening).
As Bruce Schneier has said after an experiment that uses gummi bears to fool fingerprint scanners:
The results are enough to scrap the systems completely, and to send the various fingerprint biometric companies packing
On the other hand, it is not that useful and pleasant to biometric features for identification – just typing a PIN is just as good (but we can change the PIN).
I’ve previously discussed the risks related to electronic passports, which have fingerprint images in clear form and are read without a PIN thought a complex certificate management scheme. The bottom line is, they can leak from your passport without you understanding (if the central databases don’t leak before that). Fortunately, there are alternatives that would still guarantee that the owner of the passport is indeed the one it was issued to, an that it’s not fake.
But anyway, I think the biometric data can have some future applications. Near the end of the presentation I try to imagine how it can be used for a global, distributed anonymous electronic identification scheme. But the devil is always in the details. And so far we have failed with the details.
Biometric identification is getting more common – borders, phones, doors. But I argue that it is not by itself a good approach. I tried to explain this in a short talk, and here are the slides
Biometric features can’t be changed, can’t be revoked – they are there forever. If someone gets hold of them (and that happens sooner or later), we are screwed. And now that we use our fingerprints to unlock our phones, for example, and at the same time we use our phone as the universal “2nd factor” for most online services, including e-banking in some cases, fraud is waiting to happen (or already happening).
As Bruce Schneier has said after an experiment that uses gummi bears to fool fingerprint scanners:
The results are enough to scrap the systems completely, and to send the various fingerprint biometric companies packing
On the other hand, it is not that useful and pleasant to biometric features for identification – just typing a PIN is just as good (but we can change the PIN).
I’ve previously discussed the risks related to electronic passports, which have fingerprint images in clear form and are read without a PIN thought a complex certificate management scheme. The bottom line is, they can leak from your passport without you understanding (if the central databases don’t leak before that). Fortunately, there are alternatives that would still guarantee that the owner of the passport is indeed the one it was issued to, an that it’s not fake.
But anyway, I think the biometric data can have some future applications. Near the end of the presentation I try to imagine how it can be used for a global, distributed anonymous electronic identification scheme. But the devil is always in the details. And so far we have failed with the details.