Biometric Hardware and Software for Mac OS X?

yummyporkproducts asks: "After spotting this story on MacSlash, I was wondering if anyone had actually written or ported any software for Mac OS X that allows the use of off-the shelf biometric hardware, like this pc card."

I believe not

[Lazarus2k2001]

AFAik, there is no such software for the mac.
The only Biometric device I know of, that works more or less, is a mouse for windows and Linux from Siemens with a built-in fingerprintscanner.

Re:I believe not

[nuckin futs]

but a "man pam" in the terminal reveals this :
Linux-PAM - Pluggable Authentication Modules for Linux
...there exist hardware based authentication schemes (such as the use of smart-cards and biometric devices), with suitable modules, these may be substituted seamlessly for more standard approaches to authentication - such is the flexibility of Linux-PAM.
so if there is something that exists in Linux, maybe it could be ported to OS X in no time.

there's a retinal scanner

[mrpuffypants]

it's called the iEye

however, usage of it does not need to be followed by the word "captain"

(if you dont find this funny then i'm sorry its 3am =[

Re:there's a retinal scanner

[Elwood P Dowd]

Hate to tell you this, dude, but it was 4AM.

Hope your day's going alright.

Macs not used much by the govt

[Knife_Edge]

I would guess that biometric stuff would be hard to find for Apple computers because they are not used much by the government. Despite all the news of biometrics being tested for commercial uses, the government is still the largest purchaser by far of biometric technology and thus pretty much dictates what is going to to be developed.

Mod parent down

[goombah99]

Parent poster is speaking through his hat. Nasa, and the national labs use tons of macs and also have high needs for biometric security. THis is a fact.

my mac has biometrics

[Anonymous Coward]

It has what's called a "planar discrete carpal actuator surface", where a sequence of downward motions with the fingers can insert a stream of bytes into the current application.

Different users will have different byte streams, thereby gaining or denying access to the application.

Quite sophisticated (except when the cat walks on it).

I also have a "planar continuous motion registration unit", which I'll talk about next week.

It's just PAM

[mac-diddy]

OS X has support for PAM built in, so if you have hardware that runs on OS X and a PAM module to access it, it will "work" on OS X. The problem is, Apple's LoginWindow use of PAM is broken in 10.2.2 (I've not had a chance to try it on 10.2.3) Without a LoginWindow that is PAM aware, there is really no point of using an authentication method beyond what Apple provides.

Re:It's just PAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what is needed is not a PAM module, but a plug-in for Mac OS X Authorization Services (that is, for SecurityServer). PAM in Mac OS X is a plug-in for Authorization Services (and PAM can have its own plug-ins). Loginwindow in 10.2 uses the Authorization system. If you wish to use PAM with it, you must enable it in the Authorization security policy configuration (see /etc/authorization).