We often hear the word biometric, but what exactly is a biometric? A biometric usually refers to a device that can sense, record, and then process data based on some natural and sufficiently unique characteristics of the human body such as the fingerprint, face, voice, etc. which is stored in a database and accessible via computer. This is generally with the purpose of providing secure and hard to falsify authentication of an individual’s identity.
According to David Orme from Finance Derivative, By 2023, the global biometrics market is predicted to grow by more than 15%, to over $24 billion. This means that not only Americans are embracing the security of biometric authentication, emerging regions such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia are on this trend too. Over the years biometrics are getting sophisticated, just like a laptop to an ultrabook. Well, biometrics are improving too, but is a biometric unhackable?
Biometric Data Types
Face recognition
By measuring unique patterns of a person’s face such as face contours. It is widely used in smartphones and laptops, google is currently in the process of opening support to facial recognition with the ChromeOS platform.
Iris recognition
The person’s iris is very unique in that it is considered more secure than fingerprint, an iris is the colorful area of the eye surrounding the pupil, but it’s not widely used because of the high cost.
Fingerprint scanner
This is widely used in smartphones and laptops to unlock screens, it is capturing the unique patterns of ridges and valleys on a finger.
Voice recognition
The device would measure the unique sound waves in your voice as you speak to match in the database for identity, most banks use this to identify your identity when calling the about your account to prevent identity theft.
Hand Geometry
This is typically used in security applications, it’s about measuring and recording the length, thickness, width, and surface area of your hands.
Behavior characteristics
It analyzes the way you interact with a computerized system, like keystroke, handwriting, the way you walk, how you used the mouse, and other movements that can assess who you are.
Is Biometric Unhackable?
The truth is, biometrics are hackable. There are many ways to hack a biometric, it’s not that easy but it’s not that hard either. There are many brilliant people out there who always finds a way to hack something, take the anonymous as an example. The biometric manufacturer tries to build a formidable biometric, but someone out there can reverse engineer those and could find loopholes in its security.
Problems with Biometrics
Biometrics are not private
You may think that biometrics are sucre, after all, you are the only one owning your eyes, ears, fingerprint, etc. but that doesn’t guarantee safety. Your biometrics are exposed to the public.
Your biometric data features are exposed everywhere, it’s just a matter of strategy on how to get and use them, your fingerprint is found on anything you touch and there’s a way to acquire it, your face can be easily captured and used, your voice could be recorded. Yes, almost all of those are easy to acquire.
Biometrics can be forged
There are many recorded successful hacks on biometrics, in fact, once a hacker gets a picture of your biometric data such as eyes, finger, ears, etc. they can easily gain access to your account. Let’s take Apple’s touchID as an example, famous hacker Jan Krissler beat the technology just a day after the iPhone was released.
It’s very easy to steal anyone’s identification, the hacker just needs a high-resolution photo of your biometric data, one example is the German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyens, it only took a photo of his finger and reconstructed the thumbprint using VeriFinger and just like that Krissler gained access.
If you believe that an eye scan is more secure then you are wrong, a hacker fooled Samsung’s S8 iris recognition and it wasn’t even a high priced hack, it was executed by juts placing a contact lens made from a photo of the user’s eye.
Hack consequences on biometrics
The stolen user’s identity can be used to falsify documents, criminal records or passport which could do more damage beyond imaginable. The worst part of biometric data is that if stolen you have another eye, ear, voice, etc. means you can’t replace physical identifiers.
Biometric may provide another level of security but it’s not that foolproof, maybe in the years to come biometric companies could develop more secure identification through the use of biometric to deter inherent downfalls and possibly build an unhackable one.
Conclusion
As of now, biometrics have many things to improve. But nonetheless, it provides another level of security, it just a matter of how an organization implements it. Just like any other security, biometrics could be more secure if used correctly, like multiple authentications instead of solely relying on biometrics. We’ll never know in the future, biometric companies may develop an unhackable biometric that would strengthen the security around the globe.
