SRI International, a Menlo Park, California-based biosciences research house, today announced an exclusive license of Iris on the Move® (IOM) technologies to Samsung for use in Samsung mobile products. Additionally SRI has entered into a supply agreement to start production and sales of the IOM technology-embedded Samsung mobile products for B2B applications. The initial product for this supply agreement will be a customized Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 tablet with a built-in IOM iris module.
The product will be introduced in the SIA New Product Showcase at ISC West 2015 (the largest security industry trade show in the U.S.) and offered worldwide through SRI partners and resellers. This new model will provide fast, easy-to-use, and accurate biometric identity management solutions to its users. Tests have shown this purely iris-based solution to be more than 1,000 times more accurate than published fingerprint data.
More here.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 27 2015, @10:07AM
Ingo Swann
Hal Puthoff
Russel Targ
and of course:
Martin Gardner
who wrote the book highlighting the lunacy of the previous 3.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @10:36AM
For those that are not "enlightened", parent is talking about CIA remote viewing bullshit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project [wikipedia.org]
... and this gives us nice little though...
SRI has *very* close connections to US surveillance world, and now a SRI application is going to be integrated into Samsung products for collecting biometric data.
What are the odds for that data leaking into some giant database in Utah.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 27 2015, @01:06PM
Everyone assumes biometrics are unbreakable, but that turns out to be total nonsense.
1. They can often be defeated by holding up photos or other replicas of whatever biological characteristic is being tested.
2. You can of course engage in physical force on whoever has the biological characteristic e.g. put a gun to their head.
3. You can intercept and replicate the electronic signal between the reader and whatever interprets the electronic signal. For example, the fingerprint reader sends a string of bits over a wire to a computer, so you attack the driver for the fingerprint reader, and then send the same string of bits to get in.
4. You can attack the software that uses the biometrics driver to get it to "fail open", that is assume that all answers from the biometrics driver are successful.
I'm sure there are more, but that's enough of a rundown to say "nice try, no cigar".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @03:10PM
I'm not a fan of biometrics for other reasons (including inability to change it, and the erosion of privacy implications), but the arguments you present aren't very compelling.
1) Yes, but technology can (and does) improve. I'm reminded that medieval locks were pretty bad (see "skeleton key"). If they had been written off you wouldn't have the improved versions of today. Yes, I'm aware they are still breakable, and many locks used in many places are trivially easy to pick... there are better ones in use in other locations, though, and they do still serve a useful function.
2) You can engage in physical force against somebody with pretty much any current security system. That biometrics is no better shouldn't be held against it.
3) This is a classic "Man in the Middle" attack which has well established ways to resolve it. For example, the same could be said for internet banking, but when done right your ISP still can't see your banking details.
4) Yes you can break the system, much like you can hack into a password protected server, or take a physical hacksaw to a physical lock. That doesn't mean the system is bad, only that it isn't perfect (and nobody thinks it is 100% perfect).
(Score: 2) by middlemen on Friday March 27 2015, @03:16PM
All the folks who favor biometrics have a fundamental flaw in understanding its usage from a security standpoint. Biometrics should be used as a username and not as password. This way the username will forever be unique. And no one can chop your fingers, pull out your eyes or cut off your dick to use it as a password.
(Score: 1) by Natales on Friday March 27 2015, @03:31PM
Mod parent up.
Additionally, every biometric fingerprint ends up translating into what's hopefully, a single string of bits that "prove" your identity, and I'm not going to go and so easily trust Samsung + Google with that data. The impact of the theft of such a fingerprint can potentially be devastating, particularly when the layman will trust it because "it's biometric". It's the one password you cannot change.