Fun with Fingerprint Readers

Two pieces of news that came in today make a fun counterpoint to each other. First, a grocery chain is trying out a biometric checkout system. Bring your groceries, pay with a fingerprint. Unfortunately, a story in Bruce Schneier's monthly newsletter notes that fingerprint scanners can be fooled with a bit of gelatin.

Stick my finger in it

[CitznFish]

Can I buy the Gelatine at the Store and use it to falsely pay for my groceries? How convenient! :)

Just think....

[oasisbob]

Bill Cosby... As a security consultant? Yikes.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nothing new...

[T3kno]

Macgyver did this with a glass and some candle wax :)

Too much work

[_ph1ux_]

"His more interesting experiment involves latent fingerprints. He takes a fingerprint left on a piece of glass, enhances it with a cyanoacrylate adhesive, and then photographs it with a digital camera. Using PhotoShop, he improves the contrast and prints the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet. Then, he takes a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (PCB) and uses the fingerprint transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper, making it three-dimensional"

Bah! Too much work - I just wanna shape shift ala Mystique!

from article:

[asavage]

Matsumoto's paper is not on the Web. You can get a copy by asking: Tsutomu Matsumoto
[e-mail]

someone is going to find a whole shitload of emails tomorrow morning

Psst! Buddy! Ya wanna buy a finger?

[funwithBSD]

I'm heading for Krogers [chron.com] and buying me a life time supply of caffine and HoHo's!

Re:Biometrics

[sydb]

On the other hand, if a biometric database is compromised, you lose the integrity of a part of your body. This means someone can now use tricks like the gelatin one outlined here to impersonate you. But you can't get another body. You can't revoke the compromised data.

Well, I've got ten fingers and ten toes. That makes me good for twenty lost body parts, if I can get my foot up onto the checkout without straining my groin.

Obvious solution...

[SVDave]

Ban gelatin.

Re:Retina Scanners

[raduga]

Once this guy makes eyeballs out of jell-o, and fools a retina scanner, I'll shake his hand!

Whatever for?

So you can snarf hisfingerprints, hmm?