Can the iPhone Popularize Fingerprint Readers? 356
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple's iPhone 5S features a fingerprint scanner embedded in the home button. Of course, fingerprint-scanning technology isn't new: Bloomberg Terminals feature a built-in fingerprint reader to authenticate users, for example, and various manufacturers have experimented with laptops and smartphones that require a thumb to login. But the technology has thus far failed to become ubiquitous in the consumer realm, and it remains to be seen whether the new iPhone — which is all but guaranteed to sell millions of units — can popularize something that consumers don't seem to want. Security experts seem to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude with regard to Apple's newest trick. 'I'd caution right away, let's see how it tests and what people come up with to break it,' Brent Kennedy, an analyst with the U.S. Computer Emergency and Readiness Team, told Forbes. 'I wouldn't rely on it solely, just as I wouldn't with any new technology right off the bat.' And over at Wired, technologist Bruce Schneier is suggesting that biometric authentication could be hacked like anything else. 'I'm sure that someone with a good enough copy of your fingerprint and some rudimentary materials engineering capability — or maybe just a good enough printer — can authenticate his way into your iPhone,' he wrote. 'But, honestly, if some bad guy has your iPhone and your fingerprint, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about.'"
Re:if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:0, Interesting)
This is typically why Apple manages to get things into the consumer market where others have failed – because they actually think about the use case, and why it will be better for the user, rather than just "zomg, we put a scanner on it".
Not so sure about that. Whenever I shove my iPhone up my ass I think that they could have used a better form factor.
Re:Laptop fingerprint fad (Score:3, Interesting)
I know it isn't always cool to support Apple, but I have to say that there are a lot of things that were just fads before they came in and did it right. Even if they didn't get it right, they normally did something to do it better, or to make it popular.
Look at how many mp3 players there were before the iPod...
Lots... Creative and Rio had lineups of MP3 players in the late 90's that were being sold in stores. The iPod wasn't released until 2001. A better question is when did MP3 players go mainstream? Then we get into the chicken and the egg discussion. Did Apple ride the MP3 wave that was already building or was it the "cool" factor of iPods that made MP3 players mainstream? Personally, I think that MP3 players would have gone mainstream without Apple, but Apple did have impeccable timing.
Why saphire (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple used a saphire cover for the lens cover. Why? One possibility was they needed a material that is transparent in the IR to do the sub dermal imaging. But there's other choices. Another possibility is that it's just cool. But what I'm thinking is that perhaps this cannot tolerate too much scratching so they had to use something super hard. I suppose there's also the requirement for mechanical stresses. I don't know. But if it's scratching I wonder if this will be robust.
In any case getting back to the post I'm replying to. there's no reason to store the finger print, just a hash of it, as is done for passwords. You would not want to hash the image of it either. You would want to distill it down to a set of rotationally and translationally invariant feature vectors. Of course that's still an ID of you from your fingerprint, but given the features they could not recreate your fingerprint itself.
Personally I'm very excited about this because I'm very concerned about my phone being the worlds worst 2 -factor identification. Since passwords resets from nearly all websites are sent to the address that you get all your other correspondence from them you have to use the same e-mail address for both. Your phone knows this address since you have to be able to get your e-mail. And if you also use your phone for a 2nd factor, then that doesn't really help. Anyone with your phone can just request a password reset and then they have your password and the 2nd factor. By by pay pal and google pay and your bank accounts.
So if the phone is to be that important having a biometric filter running transparently, regardless of whether it is 100%, is really welcome.
Families? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:To be honest (Score:4, Interesting)
Calculate invarient properties of the image and hash those. This is not new technology it has been around for many decades.
Re:Other Privacy issues (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/the-unexpected-result-of-fingerprint-authentication-that-you-cant-take-the-fifth/ [wired.com]
Re: To be honest (Score:3, Interesting)
You are aware that they used Apple in the presentation because at that time nobody used Android?
Are you suggesting that the NSA would equate Android with Big Brother and describe Android customers as "zombies"? They specifically referred to Apple's 1984 ad campaign, and suggested that it is ironic that Apple has become big brother, and the mindless zombies in their ad are actually their customers. I don't think that description applies to Android.
Are you suggesting that their description of Apple does not apply today? Apple hasn't relinquished any of their control, and people will line up in front of an Apple store before they even announce the release dates or features. They don't care about what the phone does or does not do, they just want it.