The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Surgery fools Japan's fingerprint checks

A Chinese woman arrested in Japan had surgery on her fingers to fool biometric border checks when entering the country. The 27-year old woman, Lin Ring, who was deported from Japan in 2007, paid for surgery to remove and switch the fingerprints from her left to right hands, and presumably vice versa. Japan uses fingerprint …

This topic is closed for new posts.
NB
Black Helicopters

bilolmetrics

oh, lol, looks like that's one set of biometrics that can no longer be trusted....

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Surgery isn't necessary

A better version of gummy fingers attack is all that's needed to fool the new capacitance touch pads, and that attack was known back in 2002:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,13730,00.asp

Which is why it's no longer a big selling point on laptop computers, still thank god no politician is stupid or naive enough to roll that technology out to ...... doh!

Oh right, Jacqui Smith the MP for Narnia, did.

Face recognition has the same problem, it should be rolled out in non secure areas first so they are aware of the problems with it before rolling it out at the airport, or building an id system around it.

The Prevaricator

and next week...

... the man who got his face surgically altered, changed his skin colouration, and lived on a ranch with only a few children to keep him company.

Oh, no, heard that one before too.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

No longer? Psah.

It was clear back in 1999 that this kind of stuff isn't too difficult to fool. You can throw more technology at it, but that works both ways. The problem is that it's the squishy law abiding fleshy citizens that get crushed in between.

Steve 149
Terminator

ooh

I can't wait for the eyeball stuff to become widespread...

Anton Ivanov
FAIL

USA Invent, China implement

If my recollections of biometric history is correct the first time this was done was in the early 1930-es (yes, no kidding) by one of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano competitors. He however, had his fingerprints completely eliminated by having grafts from his behind (or back - do not remember) onto his fingers. Being stingy however he had it done only to his fingertips so the cops meticulously collected the very few prints from surrounding areas (the ones not usually used for identification) and matched him anyway. IIRC there are several cases in russian criminal history from the same period as well.

The surgery is rather trivial and it was only a matter of time until some enterprising soul would have thought of reviving it. By the way, permutating all finger readings and trying to re-match, which I bet is what the Japanese and Americans are trying to do now, will not be enough. Humans have toes. And these have suitably patterned skin as well as gift from our tree climbing simian ancestors. And these are not in the system ya know... Should have gone with iris from the very beginning :-)

jon 72
Paris Hilton

Also Doomed to Fail

Iris Recognition - defeated by contact lenses

Paris , because Pamella Anderson (aka Barb Wire) unavailable

Scott 19
Reply Icon

Gutted

I was hoping for a minority report change of eyes.

Finding people on facebook that look like you and then killing 'em for there fingers and eyes.

philbo
Joke

If they'd used iris recognition..

..would she have fooled it by crossing her eyes?

Al fazed
IT Angle

@philbo

Or, as is the way of grey Gordon et al, by crossing their fingers.

ALF

Pete 8
Paris Hilton

So it

would really fuck them up if someone swaps an eye onto their finger and vice-versa.

Perhaps do a swap between buttflaps and face?

Paris deserves a mention, but I would rather have a real woman than a model.

This topic is closed for new posts.