Be careful though; you can't generalize all biometrics just because of flaws found in fingerprint scanning. It would be substantially more difficult to fake an iris or retina-based biometric device vs. a fingerprint. Fingerprints are much easier to come by than a retinal image. Even if you could get your hands on retina/iris imagery (i.e. from the target's eye doctor), you'd still need to construct a good model of the eyeball, which will be trickier than a plastic finger mold and some gelatin. ...I'm sure given enough time and effort, people will be able to pull it off, perhaps even within an hour or so, but you'd still need the original sample to get started. Until spy cameras get *REALLY* good, this would be the choke point to faking scanners based on iris/retina! ;)
Of course a drawback to all biometrics is the risk of theft. If you get your password stolen, just change it. If you get your retina signature stolen... hmmm... you can't exactly just cut your eyes out!? There are certainly technologies to make this difficult. How about only storing a hash of the biometric signature, which gets encrypted by user-defined password, encrypted again by a ridiculously large digital certificate (perhaps stored on a smart card that can only be activated by fingerprint), and then re-encrypted over again with the hash of another biometric! This way if a thief did get his hands on the data, he might be able to break the system in question, but you'd be reasonably safe from getting your personal identification permanently stolen on other systems. -----Original Message----- From: Tim Vidas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 4:39 PM To: 'ABRAHAM AJI' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Biometrics used for Authentication Probably none. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25300.html http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0205.html#5 -tim -----Original Message----- From: ABRAHAM AJI [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 1:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Biometrics used for Authentication Hello, Is anybody having idea about a good biometric product in the market, that can be used for authenticating users when they try to access computers having critical information. Reply in this regard is highly appreciated Regards Aji Abraham __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com
