Biometric Security And The Hackers
I was reading this blog, where they had this post named Switch Fingerprints To Trick Hi-Tech Cops which gave details of an incident that actually made me think about how insecure our biometric security techniques are.
The post had an incident to testify that. A lady named Lin Ring was deported from Japan named Lin Ring was deported from Japan in the year 2007. To be allowed tarvel, Lin Ring very ingeniously got her finger prints hacked - Ring got the left finger print to right, and the right to left. That was smart. However, this din’t help work. Immigration officers suspected the scars on Lin Ring’s fingers and got into action. Needless to mention that Lin Ring was caught.
According to the post Lin had got her surgery done at a private clinic after paying about 9000 pounds ($ 14600). Good money, I would say, but not good enough to escape the officers. Lin Ring had smartly worked her way out, but those faded scars were enough to send out the smell of crime and get officers alerted.
The iris recognition (it is a method of biometric recognition which uses an individual’s iris pattern. Iris recognition makes use of camera technology) system was perhaps a result such crimes. And this system (iris recognition) is not smart hackers to hack}. However it has other disadvantages to it like, unclear picture quality, effective only from a very close distance, and will take good time to get to all security places as the whole set up is very expensive.
Also, commercial iris recognition systems can be tricked easily by giving them a clear picture of the face and not the real face that needs to be tested.
Having said that, iris recognition if carried out everywhere can really reduce crime rate.
Tags: biometric security, fingerprints switch, iris recognition, security