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Android Gets New Anti-Spoofing Feature to Make Biometric Authentication Secure

Android Gets New Anti-Spoofing Feature to Make Biometric Authentication Secure

Jun 21, 2018
Google just announced its plan to introduce a new anti-spoofing feature for its Android operating system that makes its biometric authentication mechanisms more secure than ever. Biometric authentications, like the fingerprint, IRIS, or face recognition technologies, smoothen the process of unlocking devices and applications by making it notably faster and secure. Although biometric systems also have some pitfalls that are not hidden from anyone, as it has been proven multiple times in the past that most biometric scanners are vulnerable to spoofing attacks, and in most cases fooling them is quite easy. Google announced today a better model to improve biometric security, which will be available from Android P, allowing mobile app developers to integrate an enhanced mechanism within their apps to keep users' data safe. New Biometric Metrics to Identify Spoofing and Imposter Attacks Currently, the Android biometric authentication system uses two metrics—False Accept Rate (FA
Hackers Can Steal Your Passwords Just by Monitoring SmartPhone Sensors

Hackers Can Steal Your Passwords Just by Monitoring SmartPhone Sensors

Apr 12, 2017
Do you know how many kinds of sensors your smartphone has inbuilt? And what data they gather about your physical and digital activities? An average smartphone these days is packed with a wide array of sensors such as GPS, Camera, microphone, accelerometer, magnetometer, proximity, gyroscope, pedometer, and NFC, to name a few. Now, according to a team of scientists from Newcastle University in the UK, hackers can potentially guess PINs and passwords – that you enter either on a bank website, app, your lock screen – to a surprising degree of accuracy by monitoring your phone's sensors, like the angle and motion of your phone while you are typing. The danger comes due to the way malicious websites and apps access most of a smartphone's internal sensors without requesting any permission to access them – doesn't matter even if you are accessing a secure website over HTTPS to enter your password. Your Phone doesn't Restrict Apps from Accessing Sensors' Data
How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte
Samsung Galaxy S8's Facial Unlocking Feature Can Be Fooled With A Photo

Samsung Galaxy S8's Facial Unlocking Feature Can Be Fooled With A Photo

Mar 31, 2017
Samsung launched its new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, at its Unpacked 2017 event on Wednesday in New York, with both IRIS and Facial Recognition features, making it easier for users to unlock their smartphone and signing into websites. All users need to do is simply hold their Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus in front of their eyes or their entire face, as if they were taking a selfie, in order to unlock their phone. Biometric technology – that involve person's unique identification (ID), such as Retinal, IRIS, Fingerprint or DNA – is now being integrated into more consumer devices for improved security. But, we have seen a number of hacks involving Biometric security systems in the past, which prove that fingerprint scanner and IRIS scanner  are less secure than a passcode and can be fooled by anyone, perhaps, using a photograph of the user. But how secure is the built-in sensor from Samsung to allow for facial recognition? Not so much...at least for now
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
Police Unlock Dead Man's Phone by 3D-Printing his Fingerprint

Police Unlock Dead Man's Phone by 3D-Printing his Fingerprint

Jul 21, 2016
Now no more fight with Apple or any smartphone maker, as federal authorities have discovered a new tool for unlocking phones, as far as your phone is using any biometric sensor… 3D Printing! Yes, Police in Michigan is considering 3D printing a dead man's fingers so they could unlock smartphones in investigation crimes using their biometric sensors. A new report published today from Flash Forward creator Rose Eveleth revealed that the police recently approached professors at the University of Michigan to reproduce a dead man's fingerprint from a prerecorded scan. Once reproduced, the 3D print would be used to create a false fingerprint of the dead man, which could then be used to unlock his smartphone using its biometric sensors. The man was a murder victim, and law enforcement investigators believed that his phone might contain some useful information relevant to the case. Why Police Can't 3D-Print Themselves? Because... Since smartphone biometric sensors used
BodyPrint Technology Turns Smartphones into Biometric Scanners

BodyPrint Technology Turns Smartphones into Biometric Scanners

Apr 27, 2015
Yahoo! don't want you to every time type a PIN or swipe your phone or scan your thumbprint in order to unlock your smartphone. Instead, it only wants you to place your smartphone device on your ear in order to do that. A new concept from Yahoo's Research Labs is out that doesn't focus on old fingerprint biometric scanners that are major form of biometric security on today's smartphones, rather focuses on an idea of Bodyprint as the futuristic biometric security. A team of researchers from the Internet giant has developed a new biometric system called " Bodyprint ," which is a much affordable alternative to fingerprint scanners for mobile phones. What does Bodyprint scan? Bodyprint, built by researchers Christian Holz, Senaka Buthpitiya, and Marius Knaust, is designed to utilize different body parts as biometric sensors for different cases, depending on how the users are using their phones. As mentioned above, Bodyprint can recognize you from your ears
PayPal Wants To Integrate Password with Human Body

PayPal Wants To Integrate Password with Human Body

Apr 18, 2015
You would have been holding a number of online accounts for different services, but how many of you hold a different and unique password for every single account? Probably a very few of you. The majority of people have one or two passwords that are quite simple and easy to remember and comfortably manage on their own. However, you need not worry as the Future of identification would not rely on Passwords , according to PayPal's global head of developer evangelism Jonathan Leblanc . Neither it will depend on the old Biometric identification technologies, such as Fingerprint scanners and IRIS scanners , Rather depends on something More Secure and Easier to Use … ...Embeddable, Injectable and Ingestible Devices Yes, the next generation of identification for mobile payments and other sensitive online interactions will depend on embeddable, injectable, and ingestible devices, completely replacing passwords with the identification of your body. KILL ALL PASSWORDS
Hacker Finds a Simple Way to Fool IRIS Biometric Security Systems

Hacker Finds a Simple Way to Fool IRIS Biometric Security Systems

Mar 06, 2015
Biometric security systems that involve person's unique identification (ID), such as Retinal, IRIS, Fingerprint or DNA, are still evolving to change our lives for the better even though the biometric scanning technology still has many concerns such as information privacy, and physical privacy. In past years, Fingerprint security system , which is widely used in different applications such as smartphones and judicial systems to record users' information and verify person's identity, were bypassed several times by various security researches, and now, IRIS scanner claimed to be defeated . Don't worry! It's not like how they do it in movies, where an attacker needs to pull authorized person's eye out and hold it in front of the eye scanner. Instead, now hackers have finally found a simple way to bypass IRIS Biometric security systems using images of the victims. The same security researcher Jan Krissler , nicknamed Starbug , from the famous Chaos Co
Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint Scanner Easily Get Hacked

Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint Scanner Easily Get Hacked

Apr 15, 2014
Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint feature promises an extra layer of security for your smartphone, which also lets you make payments through PayPal. But does it really secure? Just three days after the launch of the Galaxy S5, Security researchers have successfully managed to hack Galaxy S5 Fingerprint sensor using a similar method that was used to spoof the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5S last year. FOOLING FINGERPRINT SENSOR SRLabs researchers recently uploaded a YouTube video, demonstrated how they were able to bypass the fingerprint authentication mechanism to gain unauthorized access just by using a lifted fingerprint with wood-glue based dummy finger. The S5 fingerprint scanner allows multiple incorrect attempts without requiring a password, so an attacker could potentially keep trying multiple spoofed fingerprints until the correct match. PAYPAL USERS AT RISK Samsung Galaxy S5 users can also transfer money to other PayPal users just by swiping their finger on the sensor, but
Confirmed: Samsung Galaxy S5 has a Fingerprint Scanner

Confirmed: Samsung Galaxy S5 has a Fingerprint Scanner

Feb 18, 2014
After the huge success of Samsung galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung Tablets, the world's most successful Android manufacturer is going to reveal its brand new Smartphone Samsung Galaxy S5 next week at Mobile World. Early in 2014, rumors suggested that Samsung Galaxy S5 will have Fingerprint Scanning technology like iPhone 5s . Fingerprint scanners are slowly becoming a popular feature for high-end Smartphones, and just yesterday the rumors turned out to be true and SamMobile has confirmed that Samsung Galaxy S5 device will come with a Biometric sensor capable of taking Fingerprint scans to unlock the Smartphone device. How it will work?  Samsung Galaxy S5 fingerprint sensor will be implemented into the Galaxy S5's Home button. The sensor itself works in a swipe manner, which means that you would need to swipe the entire pad of your finger, from base to tip, across the home key to register your fingerprint properly. Unlike Apple's iPhone 5s Touch ID
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