Biometric verification is one of the main topics that has been talked about recently. Trying to bypass the standard passwords and facial recognition has proven in the past to be possible. Researchers are constantly trying to find the next best thing to authenticate users and scanning the veins in a person’s hand has become one of the talked about methods. The vein scanner would scan a person’s hand and compare the vein size and location to an image that had previously stored. This seems pretty hard to mimic, however this past week it was proven possible. Researchers were able to use a modified DSLR camera after they removed the infrared lens to capture 2500 images of a hand. Researchers then took those images and made a wax hand that had the same vein location and size to mimic the original hand. This wax hand was able to mimic the real one and bypass the vein scanner–proving that it would not be the best way to authenticate a user. Although the wax hand worked, researchers stated that it was made of cheap materials and would be very time consuming to recreate and to use for everyday people.
Analyst Notes
Searches for a new authentication technique will continue but until a new safe way is found, users should continue to do what they can to protect themselves. Continuing to use two factor authentication and a strong password with many characters and variations is a good way for users to make it harder for an attacker to break into their accounts.
