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Monday, March 15, 2010

Facial Recognition Gets a Black Eye at Black Hat - InternetNews.com

Facial Recognition Gets a Black Eye at Black Hat

Researcher demonstrates how easy it is to defeat biometric security on major vendors' notebooks.

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February 20, 2009

By Sean Michael Kerner: More stories by this author:

WASHINGTON -- Biometric security technology promises to secure users through a "key" that's uniquely their own, like a fingerprint or a face. But as it turns out, it's not that hard for an attacker to get a hold of a biometric key.

They just need to replicate it.

No, the process doesn't involve cloning or harvesting organs. Instead, researcher Duc Nguyen demonstrated in a presentation here at the Black Hat security conference that all it takes is a photo to defeat biometric face-recognition technology found on notebooks from Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba.

Nguyen's findings come as enterprises and hardware vendors are seeking methods other than simple passwords to provide secure login information. Biometric locks are often seen as being more secure and more convenient. That's partly because their keys are thought to be difficult for a third party to acquire or fake, and because they avoid relying on passwords, which users often keep trivially simple to ensure they're not forgotten.

But Nguyen's findings could call into question how secure facial recognition technology actually is in its current state.

"All the face recognition techniques on all three laptops can be broken with a photo," Nguyen said during his talk. "I still don't believe it."

Read more...
http://www.internetnews.com/hardware/article.php/3804906/Facial+Recognition+Gets+a+Black+Eye+at+Black+Hat.htm

Well, it's still cool and fun to play with on your home Computer;) Here's a few links I found while searching...

eViacam was fun to play with for a few minutes. It doesn't do Logon, but it will make your mouse curser follow your Face. It will also follow your hand. It's hard to control though and the automatic clicking get a little wild if you stop the mouse in the wrong place. Still this Tech has allot of Posabailities!:)