Guys Upstairs - Tech

A Vietnamese security firm has demonstrated that laptop facial recognition software is not as secure as it may seem. BKIS, a Vietnamese Internetwork Security Center that makes antivirus software and has recently unveiled vulnerabilities in Windows Media Encoder 9 as well as Google Chrome.

Dong Ngo of CNET participated in a demonstration in which he first used a Lenovo Y430 running Vista and established himself as a legitimate user. Lenovo’s Veriface III software scanned his face for various points so that it would be able to recognize his face from various angles. The actual logon after the setup took less than a second. Within 5 minutes of starting up a Skype video chat with a BKIS technician, the technician was able to produce a “rather unflattering” picture printed on letter paper. The printout was able to log into the computer without any problems. Asus and Toshiba are also vulnerable to this problem.

The picture does not need to be high resolution, but needs to be processed such that certain key points and contrast levels are adjusted to match what the recognition algorithm expects. These vulnerabilities may be hard to overcome, so if you want to keep your laptop secure stick with username and password or fingerprint recognition.

[CNET]