German minister fingered as hacker 'steals' her thumbprint from a PHOTO

Re: Real Security systems

Those are still easy to fool. Instead of using a gummy bear you use a very thin sheet of flexible material that is affixed to a living thumb. Presto, pulse and temperature present and it wouldn't even look strange to someone who saw you since you'd put your thumb in the reader normally. Alternatively, it wouldn't be difficult to heat up a gummi bear and add a slight pulse to it.

Fingerprints are simply not something anyone should trust for a "Real" security system. A scanner that detects the live blood vessels in the eye would be harder to fool, well above the casual attacker, but this data is on file for anyone who visits an optometrist for yearly eye exams. For the less than casual attacker, breaking into your doctor's office and getting this information to allow them to build a false eye is doable if the secrets your eye unlocks were valuable enough.

In order to make biometrics secure, you need a couple guards on hand to check ID (and hopefully recognize you) and make sure you look into the scanner with your actual eye.

Re: Real Security systems

As you say, a phone's reader is not secure - Apple's broken with a silicone mould and graphite as shown here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u4ZLGsw1zo

Re: Real Security systems

> Retina Scanners have nothing to do with the Iris, it is all about the pattern of live blood vessels in the RETINA.

The difference between the two is nigh-on impossible to get across to the public - this is an old problem, recalling the multi-forwarding of the hideously incorrect "scan of the back of your eye" email 10+ years ago which still makes me cringe to see because the whole point of having a researcher is that you ask them to check your facts instead of giving your opponent an easy opportunity to dismiss your argument as poorly-informed.

I have calmed down a lot more recently so the sight of it no longer induces a 'qwerty forehead'.

Re: Hope this doesn't lead to...

Leading to many millennials getting rejected for a security clearance down the road because their 'privates' were made public on Snapchat at age 16...

Re: Hope this doesn't lead to...

Bring in Beulah Balbricker. "That tallywhacker had a mole on it. And that mole is the key to it."

Re: Hope this doesn't lead to...

Our office already does that. We all have a buttock-scan every Xmas

Re: Hope this doesn't lead to...

It needs to be 2 factor... so you fingerprints will need to be found on your body part

Re: Surely......

What alll the time? Ad maybe wear a fat suit and a mask so people can't recognise you in photos too

Re: nit-picking time...

Funny, it's spelled the same way in Ebonics.

Re: "but you'll need to speak German to appreciate it."

Plus there's a good chance this talk was live interpreted into English. Just check for any secondary audio tracks. (Yes at the CCC we are that nice :) )

Re: "but you'll need to speak German to appreciate it."

> Teutonic humour?

That's no laughing matter, Sir.

Re: "but you'll need to speak German to appreciate it."

"(automatic translation does exist and is quite good these days)"

I started writing that Google translate (as an example) isn't great, although it is much better than it was, but I tried it for the first time in a while on some German and you can get the drift most of the time. I took the first article from Der Spiegel, which is on Internet food delivery. The first two paragraphs are translated reasonably well, and the third is a bit more comedy:

Sind diese Sorgen berechtigt oder sind die Lieferdienste eine gute Alternative zum stressigen Supermarktbesuch? Zehn SPIEGEL-ONLINE-Mitarbeiter haben im Selbstversuch jeweils einen Anbieter getestet und sich Waren nach Hause in die Stadt oder aufs Land liefern lassen. Dazu bekam jeder Tester denselben Einkaufszettel. Am Ende haben wir die Online-Lieferdienste dann noch dem Offline-Vergleich unterzogen und einen Tester mit der Einkaufsliste zu Aldi geschickt.

And its translation:

Are these concerns justified or are the delivery services a good alternative to stressful supermarket visit? Ten SPIEGEL ONLINE employees each have tested a provider self-experimentation and have goods delivered to their homes in the city or the country. For this purpose, each probe was the same shopping list. In the end we have the online delivery then subjected to the offline comparison and sent a tester with the list of Aldi.

Selbstversuch, which means self-experimentation, can also be translated, particularly here, as for ourselves.And so on.

Re: "but you'll need to speak German to appreciate it."

Automatic translation does exist but it is generally crap at dealing with even the basics of a technical subject, let alone this kind of text. I read a German motorsports site regularly and Google translate gets the order of words in the English translation wrong more often than not. Often it says the opposite of what the author meant. Fortunately I can usually tell by context when that happens and retranslate in my head.

Then there are those long German compound nouns that Google just refuses to translate.

Yup automatic translation does exist, but its crap.

useable print

I did wonder that myself.

The article states "was able to use to unlock an iPhone", but then goes on to say

"The key question, however, is whether the thumbprint matches Minister von der Leyen's actual digit – and she's unlikely to offer herself up to check."

Which leads me to believe (perhaps incorrectly) that to test it, he used the fake print to set the touchID pattern on his phone, and to also unlock it 'proving' it works, or (very unlikely) that he asked her if he could borrow her phone for a few seconds.

Which (to me at least) only proves that he was able to fabricate a pattern that would be accepted by the sensor, when placed over a finger (to provide the previously mentioned heat/pulse), not, that he has been able to clone someone's prints from a photo.