Mythbusters beat fingerprint security system
Back in 2002 a group at the Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences in Yokohama famously showed that many fingerprint readers can be fooled by artificial gelatine “fingers”. As the BBC wrote at the time:
Fake fingers made out of common household ingredients can fool security systems that use fingerprints to identify people.
The artificial fingers and prints were created with gelatine by Japanese researchers who used the digits to trick biometric systems into thinking they were seeing the real thing.
Not only was it possible to fool the security systems with casts of fingers, the researchers found they could make convincing fakes using fingerprints lifted from glass.
Experts say the experiments cast serious doubt on any claims that this type of biometric system can be made fully secure.
The original research paper by Matsumoto et al is available here.
Recently, Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” turned their attention to the subject, and convincingly demonstrated that how to outwit commercial fingerprint readers, including those in “high security” door locks. Watch the video here.
September 20th, 2006 at 20:26
Well… it’s not like this is a shock. It really just underlines the extent to which politicians fail to comprehend the vast gap between their faith in what a particular technology can accomplish and reality.
I reckon a videotape of the show should be sent to every MP.