Hacker Club Publishes German Official's Fingerprint 253
A number of readers let us know about the Chaos Computer Club's latest caper: they published the fingerprint of German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (link is to a Google translation of the German original). The club has been active in opposition to Germany's increasing push to use biometrics in, for example, e-passports. Someone friendly to the club's aims captured Schäuble's fingerprint from a glass he drank from at a panel discussion. The club published 4,000 copies of their magazine Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing the minister's fingerprint — ready to glue to someone else's finger to provide a false biometric reading. The CCC has a page on their site detailing how to make such a fake fingerprint. The article says a ministry spokesman alluded to possible legal action against the club.
Respect, respect maan! (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of Gone in 60 seconds (the Jolie version) where one of the car-thieves glues on Elvis' fingerprints.
Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Biometrics: lamest of all security protocols (Score:5, Insightful)
A person only has 20 digits, 2 palms, 2 soles, 2 retinas, and one genome. All of the biometric properties of those can easily be duplicated with noninvasive methods (simply enrolling in a biometric system requires the same access as duplication would). When one of those 27 properties is compromised, how do you revoke its use? I guess start with the fingers and palms and as people get older they have to start using their feet for identification, and at the very last make them get pricked for each identification. When all the biometric identifiers are used up, the now useless (at least in a Secure(TM) society) people can be recycled in the soylent green program or something.
T-shirt (Score:2, Insightful)
Major flaw of biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
This event highlights one of the major flaw of biometrics. This official had his fingerprint copied. There is nothing he can do. He can't change it. He can't prevent people from using it. No fingerprint reader will ever be able to determine with 100% certainty whether a particular fingerprint is real or fake. Bottom line: when one of your biometric traits gets stolen, you get screwed. For life.
I hope this convinces governments that using biometrics for anything is a bad idea (other than perhaps criminal investigations, although what if this german official's fingerprint was found on a murder scene ?).
Re:In future news... (Score:5, Insightful)
What better way than a senior official to be convicted of crimes as a result of identity theft because officials such as him decided that privacy didn't really matter anymore?
Personally, I sincerely wish that this happens in all the countries which have fingerprinting in place. Enough already.
Legal action? (Score:5, Insightful)
To what ends? You can't deter it as it's already happened, and you can't suppress it, as even the method for tricking the security system is widely known. If the security system is broken, you can't legalize it into working again. The security system was built in order to keep things safe, and now we have to keep other things safe from the security system itself.
Re:No better thant he status quo? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, since fingerprints cannot be conclusive anymore, I foresee our politicians with moral fibers of steel pushing for more surveillance. I mean, if we cannot really tell whose fingerprints they are, we certainly need video proof! And since we do not know where a crime may happen, the policy makers (who typically have about as much morality as a pea) have decided that the way around this is to have cameras everywhere. Public restrooms and your house included.
I mean, think of the children!
A perfect demonstration to the perfect person (Score:4, Insightful)
Bravo!
Re:Brave defenders of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush was right, it is JUST a piece of PAPER. Why? Because American's do NOTHING about it and do not believe in it.
This is plain to see by their inactions.
Re:In future news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:couldn't possibly have negative consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, we also have a new buzzword for crime with ideological motives. It's called terrorism...
Re:Respect, respect maan! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"The" finger print? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
All three easily solved via a security by-pass incentive in a form of a pistol to the head or a kidnapped lover/child/dog etc which will "get it" if you do not cooperate or some poison with time release and the antidote delivered upon your succesful authentication, etc and so on and on and on and on.
"Ironclad security" does not exist.
Re:Respect, respect maan! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Major flaw of biometrics (Score:4, Insightful)
Biometric data may put some entry barriers higher, so what? The problem is that you just can't get a new iris scan, like you get a new passport once your gets stolen.
The worst of the situation is that we have all these politicians deciding --without the least form public debate about the real privacy implications-- that biometric data is now to be collected, and used, and kept by the government.
Re:Has anyone tried this on a fingerprint reader? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the end you have to be realistic with your expectations for any security system. We lock our front door when we leave our house but we all know that someone that wants to get in can still get in if they want to try hard enough. When you lay in bed at night you have no way to be sure that a stranger hasn't secretly entered your home and is waiting to cut your throat in the dark. Yet we make a bigger deal over how secure access to your bank account and other sensitive information is. At some point you just have to say enough and go on with your life.
Re:couldn't possibly have negative consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:couldn't possibly have negative consequences (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:isn't biometric authentication a good thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that with most types of biometric data (eg. fingerprints), they suffer two faults: you leave copies of them everywhere, and once compromised they can't be changed. The first makes it easy for someone to compromise the authentication, as this club demonstrated. I'll bet the minister left his fingerprints on a lot more than just a single plastic cup at a panel, and lifting a fingerprint from a hard surface is relatively easy to do. And the second means that compromises are 100% absolutely fatal for the rest of your life. With a password or a PIN, if it's compromised you can just use alternative authentication and then change it. With a physical key or combination you can just change the lock or the combination on the lock and the old key or combination becomes useless. But how do you change your fingerprint? And if you can't, how does anyone from that point on know that any use of your fingerprint is really you and not an imposter? So the fingerprint check doesn't add significant difficulty in obtaining the additional authentication item, and it makes a compromise much more annoying to recover from.
You have to evaluate any security mechanism not just in terms of it's strength (resistance to compromise), but in terms of it's resilience (the consequences of a compromise and the difficulty of correcting the compromise). Biometrics tend to vary on the first, but all of them are highly brittle: any compromise tends to be total and irreparable.
Re:In future news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I make DNA all day in the lab. It's getting easier and cheaper to make every year.
DNA isn't going to turn out to be any more of a panacea than fingerprints.
Re:Major flaw of biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
The point being that my biometric data is mine. It is private. It is not the government's business to have my blood samples, or DNA, or finger print. I am not a criminal, and therefore I expect to be entitled to some privacy from the BigBrother.
Once some retarded government bureaucrat decides to leave a laptop inside a taxi or something, my private data is lost, and I can never get a new fingerprint, or iris scan. I can get a new social security number, I can get a new passport, a new bank account number, but I **cannot** get a new DNA.
Re:Major flaw of biometrics (Score:3, Insightful)
But I suppose you wear a tinfoil mask to guard against those face recognition systems tied to cameras because your face data is yours and only yours.
You are confusing the ethics, legality and technology behind biometrics in a bad way.
Re:In future news... (Score:5, Insightful)
No need to duplicate it, free samples are falling off you everywhere you go. So no, DNA isn't very good either.
There is however a very good biometric one can use. A neural imprint of a specific token; it currently can't be read without the cooperation of the person, it leaves no imprint around except as the owner desires and controls.
It's known as a 'password'. A technology that is, perhaps, new and radical, but far more secure than other biometrics. Which, unfortunately, isn't particularly secure, just less insecure than the crap the scam artists of the biometrics industry are trying to push on the gullible.
Re:In future news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, DNA wants to duplicate, although that's not what you meant.
In terms of different individuals having the same DNA, talk to identical twins. About all DNA tests can really do is disprove that someone with non-matching DNA is guilty. DNA "matches" don't compare 100% of the DNA (even if they did, that doesn't rule out twins), and close relatives may well "match" also (and the fewer comparison points, the less-close the relative that could still "match").
Re:isn't biometric authentication a good thing? (Score:1, Insightful)
You do not want to give criminals even more incentive to cause bodily harm than they already have.
Re:In future news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Major flaw of biometrics (Score:2, Insightful)
But I suppose you wear a tinfoil mask to guard against those face recognition systems tied to cameras because your face data is yours and only yours. You are confusing the ethics, legality and technology behind biometrics in a bad way.
Get a grip dude:
My blood type is (still) legally private.
My iris scan is (still) legally private.
My DNA is (still) legally private.
I am still allowed to walk down the street anonymously, with a cap, and dark glasses own, and a police officer still needs probable cause to ask me to remove those. A police officer also needs cause to request a fully, well made iris scan.
But if I need to: travel abroad, or while living in another EU country, get any paperwork done. (Both rights I have, mind you). I need a passport.
To have a passport I need to surrender my fingerprints. My fingerprints are no longer private, the government has the right to request them. I fully understand that, and I do oppose it.
Not only that, the government also made my fingerprints much, much less private. Now people don't need special permits or access to a (well kept?) database to have a copy of a very good scan of my fingerprints. Because now for every service I need to present a passport, I'll need to handle over these (high quality) files (kept in the passport) for copy if so desired.
Before, if a hotel clerk wanted my fingerprints it would be manual job, it would be time costing, expensive, and the quality would be poor. Now he buys a reader, asks to take a look at my passport, and voila! High quality copies made in a second, to extra costs, no extraordinary effort. My government after all, took good care and spend good money for it to be easy.
So now, not only my central government has access to these (high quality) scans, but also a bunch of other people as well. Which is, lets face it, a much worse problem.
I reckon you hint at the point that people confuse anonymity with privacy [schneier.com]. But trust me, I am pretty aware of the difference.
Re:Movies come to mind... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's often rather difficult for people to make an objective assessment of the present especially since causes and facts are often incomplete "now" and often require now to be later before you can look back on now and get a more clear picture, but consider the shocks and fears generated when "1984" was published. Now look at how much farther we have gone beyond 1984's "science fiction" and how we don't even notice it, let alone are alarmed by it.
Things aren't "getting bad." They ARE bad. Things are getting worse. For all the people out there who think we need to give up privacy and crap like that, you need only look back to your teenage years for why a sense of personal space and privacy is important for people in general. I don't know that there are any studies on the subject, but I'd be willing to place a very large bet on the notion that in societies with less privacy, the suicide rates are likely to be higher. A person's sense of safety is closely tied to their sense of privacy... you only need to sit on a toilet without walls surrounding it once to understand that notion.
Some CCC members reckoned to disappear anytime (Score:2, Insightful)
The answer why I am posting as an AC is left as an exercise to the reader.
Re:Respect, respect maan! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:couldn't possibly have negative consequences (Score:2, Insightful)
Very clever. I think I'm going to use this one too. Here are some other, real life examples of illegal actions:
- the Boston Tea Party
- freeing slaves before the Civil War
- Gandhi's protests against colonization
- Reading the Bible, or other religious text, in nations without Freedom of Religion
There are plenty of illegal actions that are morally correct actions. I usually pull out this list to anyone who suggests that following the law is one and the same with moral actions. Anyone else care to add to this list?Re:In future news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In future news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Respect, respect maan! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Respect, respect maan! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yep! Really, really well done! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, fingerprints are extremely weak security checks since a normal person leaves hundreds of prints behind them every day.
Re:even worse (Score:2, Insightful)
I note three things that appear to be grossly overlooked in all the crowing from our community of armchair experts. 1) There there is such a thing as a hierarchy of security needs. Some things just don't need extreme security. For a lot of security needs, mere deterrence is sufficient (look at bike locking strategies for example). 2) Technologies can be used in tandem to create more robust security. 3) Further development of technologies may lead to individual robustness for particular security measures. The first locks, for instance, were extremely crude.