Sensor Uses Body's Electrical Signature To Secure Devices 64
coondoggie writes with word that a "group of researchers is proposing a sensor that would authenticate mobile and wearable computer systems by using the unique electrical properties of a person's body to recognize their identity. In a paper [presented Monday] at the USENIX Workshop on Health Security and Privacy, researchers from Dartmouth University Institute for Security, Technology, and Society defined this security sensor device, known as Amulet, as a 'piece of jewelry, not unlike a watch, that would contain small electrodes to measure bioimpedance — a measure of how the body's tissues oppose a tiny applied alternating current- and learns how a person's body uniquely responds to alternating current of different frequencies.'"
Oh joy (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet more ways to use "infallible" dowsing rods and iris gazers to "do identity". It always comes down to this: By definition biometrics are easier to fake than to replace. This makes them unsuitable for "casual" identification, as opposed to "adversarial" identification, ie working out it was you that stole the cookie from the jar. We're not all criminals, you know. Worse, most identification isn't adversarial, but casual, and on top of that you don't just have but a single identity. Yet that's what all this is invariably targeted at: adversarial, and just the single identity. Just stop it already. I'll take the inconvenience of using a key to unlock the door, or showing a loyalty card with a fake name on it, thanks. At least that key and its lock can be replaced without surgery.