Authenticated Networked Guided Environment for Learning

technology watch doc 139

Abstract:

You too can create fingerprint forgeries in your kitchen, says a Japanese researcher who uses household items to fool biometric security devices.  A Japanese researcher claims to have found a way to fool fingerprint scanners up to 80 percent of the time, using household materials and a little lateral thinking.

According to the security newsletter Crypto-Gram, Tsutomu Matsumoto from Yokohama National University has evolved a technique that takes casts from fingers and builds fake digits from gelatin -- the stuff of jelly babies. With care, he says, all 11 of the current fingerprint scanning technologies he tested give a false positive 80 percent of the time using the fraudulent jelly extremity.