I was reading this blog, where they had this post titled Switch Fingerprints To Trick Hi-Tech Cops which gave details of an incident that actually made me ponder upon how insecure our biometric security techniques are.
The post had an incident to testify that. A lady named Lin Ring was deported from Japan named Lin Ring was deported from Japan in the year 2007. To be allowed tarvel, Lin Ring very ingeniously got her finger prints hacked – she got the left finger print to right, and the right to left. That was smart. However, this din’t help work. Immigration officers suspected the scars on her fingers and got into action. Needless to mention that Lin Ring was caught.
The news says Lin had got her surgery done at a private clinic after paying about 9000 pounds ($ 14600). Good money, I would say, but not good enough to escape the scars. Lin Ring had smartly worked her way out, but those faded scars were enough to get the officers suspect her.
The iris recognition (it is a method of biometric recognition which uses an individual’s iris pattern. It uses camera technology) system was probably an outcome of such incidents. And this system (iris recognition) is not an easy method even for {ace hackers to hack}. But then it has other disadvantages to it like, poor picture quality, ineffective from a far distance, and will take few years to reach all security places as the whole set up is very costly.
Also, commercial iris recognition systems can be fooled easily by giving them an accurate picture of the face and not the real face that needs to be tested.
Having said that, iris recognition if implemented everywhere can really help strengthen security.