In part one of our two-part series, we explored how biometric authentication methods are being defeated. In the second part, we’ll explore how manipulating biometrics can alter society, and what can be done to avoid a biometric dystopia.
Biometric authentication secures access to most consumer phones, many laptops and PCs, and even physical access to homes and offices. Many of the consequences of defeating biometric authentication are no different than those of defeating other forms of authentication like a password or house key: stolen property, account takeover, fraudulent purchases, identity theft, violation of privacy, etc.
To neutralize the threat of a stolen password or key, we can easily change them at will, but the same can’t be said for our biometry. Modifying our biometry is either so impractical or impossible that most of our biometry is effectively static. This persistence is what makes our biometric data so inherent to us, but it’s also what makes that data so valuable and dangerous. Once that data is known, it can be replayed, shared and manipulated.
Bending biometrics
In courts of law and forensic laboratories around the world, biometrics have the final authority for identifying people. Whether identifying someone recorded in video evidence or human remains, society depends on biometrics when it matters most. If biometric authentication can’t be trusted, attribution can’t be definitively made. Criminals will evade justice, innocent victims will be wrongly convicted, and crimes will be easier to mask.
Such an outcome may seem unrealistic, but advancements in AI have already brought this reality-bending risk to our collective doorstep. A burgeoning new technology known as general adversarial networks (GAN) uses ..
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