Biometrics must balance privacy and security

Medicine, Science & Technology Forum

Biometrics must balance privacy and security

Biometrics just encourages mutilation.

Chop off a finger, rip out an eyeball...it's simple.

Or you can go all high tech....put a piece of special plastic onto someone's finger, take the print...put the plastic on your finger and voila.

Scan a picture of someone's eyeball (quite similar to your avatar, Sean), make a contact with the retinal scan and voila...nothing is foolproof.

A combination of password authentication, biometrics, and secure ID is better....but still not foolproof.

Nothing is fool proof, indeed, just as there is no such thing as "safe & secure". It's all a matter of degree. At this point biometrics offers a higher degree of identity security than anything else we have to offer.

Problem was solved.
Case will be closed.

RFID chip implants. Approved Oct 2004 by Congress for medical purposes.
Pending further legislation for more widespread uses.

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RFID is no better than any other ID sitting in a computer database somewhere. It's not as secure as an actual biometric.

Each chip has its own digital fingerprint assigned only to that individual.
The "ID" wouldn't be housed in a computer, but in the flesh....

One could always have the chip dug out I suppose.....but not by a willing subject...as secure as a chopped finger would be.

Thanks.

Scary.

Implants are here now and will proliferate in our future.

We better get used to them.http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/m/diffident.gif

A biometric such as a digital rendition of a fingerprint....is a binary string of 0's and 1's as you are well aware.
A nanochip could very easily incorporate this binary string and add another unique identifier.

For any biometric identifier, there is a a database housing that digital fingerprint as well.....a simple DMV lookup proves this.

Add encryption over a secure network....and its as secure as any biometric digital translation.

The problem they are concerned about is not security....it's privacy.

www.lawtechjournal.com/notes/2002/24_020819_unatin.php
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...MNGQA99FDM1.DTL

and many others

Interesting, thanks. Some questions and comments, if you will.

You are assuming that nano-chips couldn't be replicated or falsified by crooks and are therefore just a good as a real biometric. This assumption is based on false logic. You are correct in that the "common crook" would not be able to work this out for themselves, but you under-estimate the power of insidious hackers. Take the following ficticious security example from current (and accurate) Internet trends:

A thirteen year old kid with a bad attitude and an oath of vendetta against a public Internet forum who banned him from their site for consistent violation of site policies. The kid goes looking for a way to "teach them a lesson." He searches google for phrases such as "how to hack a website" and "take down server" and finds a number of informative resources that describe the basics of hacking. Eventually he comes across a small treasure-trove: begining hacker tools. One of the tools is a script that was coded by an anonymous hacker somewhere on the Internet with a strong knowledge of possible exploits for web servers. So our kiddie downloads and runs the script targeting our forum website. The script attempts hundreds of known exploit techniques and finally discovers not one, but five different points of entry into the server. The "script kiddie" then gains access to the server and has his way with it ranging from defacement of the site to formatting the entire hard drive.

Believe it or not, this is NOT uncommon. Script kiddies may be stupid, but they are a very real threat to Internet security because there are great numbers of them who employ powerful software tools written by only a few who actually know what they're doing. This is relevant to the topic at hand because the script kiddie is our "common crook" who is armed with tools produced by an elite crook who is well hidden from public view and tends not o cause trouble himself.

In this light, I guarantee you that were such a system as you describe (SWTT) to be deployed, a handful of the elite will produce tools to circumvent security and falsify information and steal data if the entire system is based on a single point of failure: the digital chip. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted, nor if it is hardware, nor if it costs $1M for the developer's kit. I know hackers. If you say "there's no way you can do this," they say, "oh yeah?" Thus begins the challenge.

For the most part anything can be hacked at. Your model is particularly dangerous because there is no authentication that occurs. It simply assumes that the presence of the digital signature contained in the chip is all the authentication it needs. That is begging to be hacked. A multi-layer system like I describe however requires multiple points of verification to authenticate and could globaly reject access after X failed attempts. It can be made to be impossible to hack if the proper measures are taken for physical security, network encryption and server software security - but only on the condition that authentication is verifiable which means either multiple points of input, or a single point of input which cannot be falsified (I've yet to see anything matching this description).

And for the sake of discussion, want to know how I would break your lovely RFID encrypted system?

1) I wouldn't bother hacking the device or trying to obtain the decrypted data; it's not necessary. What I would do is download some information on RF signalling and produce an RF sniffer that can record and replicate RF signals.

2) I would take my RF recorder and record the RF session between the device reader at my favorite ATM and my personal chip (since everyone has one, right? ). I would then sample the same sessions of several friends and dump all the recorded RF data onto a computer. A little simple signal analysis will reveal what portions of the session are static (initial handshakes) and what portions are session-specific encrypted data.

3) I would replicate the handshake signals and trigger my chip into responding and go back and forth with signal analysis until I can completely replicate an RF session interaction with any RFID chip. Revising my design to replicate these sessions as needed, it will emit handshakes and record the responses from an RFID - this is how I steal data from the RFID. It's all recorded in analog RF signals, I have no idea what the data itself is.

4) With a little surveillance, I choose a victim to target; I wait for them outside my bank, watching who comes and goes and what vehicles they are driving and how they dress. I pick a young lady with a big wedding ring and an expensive car who appears to be the pampered type. I follow her, find where she lives and come return at a later date with a plan to trick her into bringing her RFID chip to within session range of my session simulator/recorder. I would probably do this as a phoney flower delivery person and have her sign a digital tablet with the device embedded in the tablet in such a way as to be activated when she grasps the tablet. I thank her very much and wish her a nice day as I walk away with not only her RFID data, but a high resolution digitial copy of her signature too - maybe that'll be useful one day.

5) I make a second revision of my device which emits the RFID responses I've stolen and then take this device to the same ATM. The ATM now interacts with my RFID simulator which contains my victim's information. Once I'm authenticated, I make a small withdrawal.

And that's the easy way.

I don't like the RFID solution either.

But this is where they are headed, like it or not....if you look at the trends....factory production...companies' collusion with the feds
I am not so much as concerned with security...ANYTHING can be hacked into....
inlcluding biometric information....hack into the local DMV for my fingerprints...a 13 year old could do that too.

You can sniff your way into an FDC and be the richest man in the world....where there is a will there is a way....

My concern is privacy, GPS transmission, walking under door portals etc.

Setting up an authentication protocol including various means of identification....I mentioned a multi-layer solution in post #2.
"A combination of password authentication, biometrics, and secure ID is better....but still not foolproof."

Nanochips will be the future....to include biometric identification will prove redundant.

I must've missed your comment in post #2. I share your privacy concerns. Even if nanochips were an option in the future, I anticipate that if they are optional for participation they will receive twice as much negative coverage as positive and people will simply opt out. Overall, I think they're a bad idea.

Such "peace and security" could trigger WW3 if overpowering governments don't recognize the power of the peoples' will to not be domineered over in a totolitarian world.