FC: IEEE's Steven Cherry, Roger Clarke on biometric tech, problems

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:

"Biometric technologies and their problems, from German magazine c't"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04144.html

---

Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 16:25:15 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Steven Cherry <s.cherry () ieee org>
Subject: Re: FC: Biometric technologies and their problems, from German
 magazine c't

Declan,

In a September article ("Who Goes There? 
<http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep02/911e.html> I mentioned 
the German work in my final paragraph.

Here's the last part of the one-page piece, which gives you the set-up:

> Older, but not wiser
>
> Older ID and document systems have their own problems. Credit card theft 
> is a perennial, and apparently growing, problem. Even smart credit cards, 
> such as the American Express Blue card, can be hacked, as two researchers 
> in the United Kingdom recently proved. And in New Jersey, an investigation 
> by the Bergen County Record found that, among other things, security 
> failings allow driver's licenses to be issued despite the presentation of 
> inadequate identifying documents. New Jersey was home to at least four of 
> the 11 September hijackers, two of whom reportedly had valid state 
> driver's licenses.
>
> Even with valid documents, problems arise. In recent years, the U.S. 
> Social Security Administration routinely issued tens of thousands of 
> Social Security numbers to noncitizens who presented insufficient or 
> counterfeit identification.
>
> Adding biometric information to driver's licenses may not be enough. 
> Researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan have found they were 
> able to replicate fingerprints with a cheap artificial "skin." They 
> photographed a fingerprint left on a drinking glass, enhanced it with 
> photo-editing software, and then used a photosensitive sheet to transfer 
> it three-dimensionally to a sheet of copper. From there they could move 
> the image onto a highly elastic food-based gelatin. The fingerprint was 
> recognized by a variety of security systems about 80 percent of the time.
>
> That may be more work than is really needed. A recent book by three German 
> researchers told how they defeated a fingerprint scanning system by 
> breathing "gently upon the sensor's surface." They reported that on the 
> screen of the biometrically protected computer, "we were able to see the 
> contours of an old fingerprint slowly reemerge." In all, the team tested 
> 11 biometric security systems and, by a variety of means, defeated each of 
> them.



--
  Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566
  Senior Associate Editor
  IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave,  New York, NY 10016
  <s.cherry () ieee org>  <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org>



---

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 13:29:18 +1100
To: declan () well com
From: Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke () xamax com au>
Subject: Re: FC: Biometric technologies and their problems, from German
 magazine c't

> From: Markus Kuhn
> Date: Wed May 29, 2002  11:16:20 AM US/Pacific
> Subject: c't: unsupervised biometric scanners more toys than serious 
> security measures
> An even more fatal blow to off-the-shelf *unsupervised* biometric
identification products was given recently by three authors in an
article in the well-respected German computer magazine c't:
>   Lisa Thalheim, Jan Krissler, Peter-Michael Ziegler: Körperkontrolle --
>   Biometrische Zugangssicherungen auf die Probe gestellt.  c't 11/2002,
>   Heise Verlag, ISSN 0724-8679, p 114-, 17 May 2002.
>   http://heise.de/ct/english/02/11/114/
...

Valuable paper, that!

My summary of the quality challenges to biometrics is in slides 13-20 of a 
presentation to a Uni of Hong Kong seminar in May:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/BiomHKU.ppt (Achtung!  Ppt!)

I still haven't had time to finish the paper, but the flavour is given in 
my notes from CFP in April:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/NotesCFP02.html#BiomRC

--
Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke () xamax com au           http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor, Uni of Hong Kong, Dept of Comp Sci and Info Sys
Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, Dept of Comp Sci





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