Information Security & Occasional Forays Into Adjacent Realms
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Lawrence Abrams - writing at Bleeping Computer - regales us with the (unfortunately true) tale of nearly two hundred and thirty thousand Danish passports possess invalid finger print data (the hands are 'swapped', as it were).
via Nikhil Pahwa, reporting for Wired UK, comes a glimpse into an Indian version of Big Brother, in this case, a database monikered Aadhaar, in which is contained the apparently problematically managed biometric identity data of over 1.2 Billion Indian Citizens. I fear for the freedom of the justly proud and wonderful people of India with the existence of this system. Nice logo though, eh?
"The Aadhaar number is a 12 digit identity code, based on a person's biometric and demographic information, that has been made mandatory for a large number of government welfare and private services in India: at present you need one to open a bank account, get a mobile phone, pay taxes, or even get an ambulance. It is the largest biometric identity project in the world and has enrolled more than 1.22 billion people. Russia, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are interested in adopting similar systems." - via Nikhil Pahwa, reporting for Wired UK
via the superb research efforts by Wenyao Xu, PhD , Feng Lin PhD and Zhanpeng Jin PhD - all Professors of Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, comes a story of both exacting scientific method and incredible rigor, in which, the future of passwords may very well be revealed. Read it and weep for our advesaries.
via Peter Rudegeair and AnnaMaria Andriotis - writing at The Wall Street Journal - comes a good example of crime reportage, regaling us with an exposé of pernicious criminality within the Identity Theft arena: The utilization of Synthetic Identities leveraged to abscond with fungible assets... In this case, to the tune of billions of dollars. While not new - as the article erroneously claims in both it's title and body copy - the use of synthetic identities targeting our children's identities and unused Social Security Numbers has been an ever-increasing fraud modality for a number of years. Today's Must Read.
Today's MustRead Information Security post and video is also deemed a MustWatch as well. Sam Cattle (National Security Practice Director, Technology Solutions) at Rolta AdvizeX details the particulars of Identity, and names such the New Perimeter. Very Nice.
Photos of a person in disguise — wearing glasses, a head covering, and scarf — with the points of the face detected by a new artificial intelligence face recognition system noted in the center and rightmost image of this photograph. | Image Credit: Amarjot Singh, et al.