Digital Iris Fakes Made with Evolving Algorithm Fool Biometric Scanners | Popular Science - 0 views
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When iris-scanning biometric security systems create a digital imprint of an iris, they don’t actually store that image of the iris for future comparison to the real thing. Rather, when a person scans his or her iris into a biometric system for the first time, the system turns the iris into a code consisting of about 5,000 bits of data. This code is based on about 240 points that are measured in the actual iris image, and is for all intents and purposes a unique digital analog of the iris.
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researchers at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and West Virginia University have found a way to reverse-engineer an iris image from the digital code itself using genetic algorithms--an iris image so good it can fool a biometric scanner.
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What this essentially means is that if a database containing iris codes were hacked, the hackers could construct iris images that would dupe scanners, and they would never even have to get near the actual owner of that iris.
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"Someone wishing to access the military base could hack the defense contractor, steal the iris code, reconstruct the iris, print it to a contact lens, and access the military facility. It's all very Mission Impossible, but according to the research, it's not so very far-fetched."
