Linux-compatible OEM fingerprint reader

What are you wanting besides the pointers that Google provides?

--kyler

I'm not the OP, but I'd be interesting to know if anyone has successfully used a fingerprint reader as a way to log in under Linux. Now *that* would be cool!.

-Dan

Possibly, and also insecure. I read about someone who had managed to lift a fingerprint from a reader, make a rubber finger, and have the reader verify it. Using fingerprints for authentication is almost like writing your password on the keyboard.

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Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

Oh well. It would have looked cool though. Talk about a chick magnet. :-D

-Dan

And has the opposite drawback too... if you ever had an accident and lost that finger then you wouldn't be able to logon.

I think the thing with rubber fingerprints was on an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation... doesn't make it true since there appears to be an awful lot of bollocks in that program as well as fact ;-)

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Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK.
Trevor-Hemsley@dial.pipex.com

It needn't bee that dramatic. Who hasn't ever cut their finger, altering the fingerprint, at least temporarily?

That's not where I heard about it. A quick Google search turned up this:

It seems a bit more credible than CSI to me.

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Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

Maybe this is the information you are refering too?

I recall reading about it...lessee...yup, here it is.

Favorite part: Lisa and Starbug say they developed their technique after developers of fingerprint scanning equipment claimed that their first attack did not present a credible threat because it could only be carried out under laboratory conditions. The two plan to test their new field technique later this week at German computer hardware store which uses fingerprint biometrics in their electronic purchasing system.

--kyler

I imagine for secure login you could design a system equiped with a spool of very thin clear plastic running over the fingerprint reader, after every login you would advance the spool and then destroy (incinerate..) the plastic

Don't forget that the entire keyboard is covered with your fingerprints.

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Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

Well you'd also have to incinerate the keyboard after each use also.

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Alex Pavloff - remove BLAH to email
Software Engineer, ESA Technology

either that or resort to typing with the feet..

Most that I have read recently suggests that (at least consumer level) fingerprint ID/security is a waste of time now and for the immediate future. Just a sales gimmick rather than offering any added security. There's a guy in Japan who's been defeating these things on a regular basis with gelatin moulds.

plus of course with a linux boot CD and NT/XP password changer, physical access to a machine basically means that all bets are off.

John

If it's a real multiuser system, it will be covered with lots of different fingerprints, that will be a lot more difficult to extract.

Maurits.

*Or* use toe-print (or some other less-widely exposed piece of flesh) authentication! I'm off to the patent office. Think of me when you start saying things like "I licked-in to the computer and..."

--kyler

I think retina scans are more practical, and are already patented. :)

Maurits.

Nah. Brainwave pattern recognition is the future, mate.

Added benefit: No user is going to complain about the bulk of their laptop if they have to lug a motorcycle-sized helmet along just to log on.

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the Entity Formerly Known As Jazz

Use Linux. Educate yourself. Emancipate yourself.
   (Paul Cooke on comp.os.linux.advocacy)

Yes, but anything you touch has your fingerprints on it. So all an attacker would have to do is get something you touched. I think that was the point. If you were targeting a particular user you could just steal some of his or her trash as you watched him/her drop something in the wastecan. If you weren't any fingerprint will do.

-Dan

The voices in the head of "Trevor Hemsley" caused Trevor Hemsley to write in news: snipped-for-privacy@trevor2.dsl.pipex.com:

If it was on tv then it has to be true.

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