Sunday, 05/19/02

A convenience store in west Seattle recently picked up some free media when it debuted its new fingerprint reader. The idea is that you'll set up an account with a credit card and a fingerprint scan, and after that, you can purchase your pickles and beer with the safe, secure jab of a digit. Doesn't that sound grand? Grand, as in the larceny anyone could effect by beating the biometrics with a plastic mold and a few cents worth of gelatin? Bruce Schneier offers a delightful writeup of a Japanese cryptographer's successful attempts to bamboozle the best the biometric industry has to offer. "The results are enough to scrap the systems completely, and to send the various fingerprint biometric companies packing."

Schneier also links to the breathlessly reported Seattle story, which includes the unironic reassurance that "Wary customers still will be able to pay the old-fashioned way if they want".

(Schneier's Crypto-gram is a monthly newsletter on security topics with a slant toward computers and cryptography; I usually read it the day it comes out.) 12:48AM «

Bits pushed by Movable Type