unforgeable optical tokens?

[Hadmut Danisch]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 12:07:38PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-15.html
> 
> An idea from some folks at MIT apparently where a physical token
> consisting of a bunch of spheres embedded in epoxy is used as an
> access device by shining a laser through it.
> 
> On the surface, this seems as silly as biometric authentication -- you
> can simply forge what the sensor is expecting even if you can't forge
> the token.


Mmmh, assuming that this is really difficult to forge, it's not
silly and doesn't compare to biometric authentication. 

Biometric authentication is a different matter, always bound
to a person and usually tried to be used for authentication of
persons.

I see several applications where these tokens could be really
useful where biometric methods are completely useless. Main advantage
seems to be that these tokens are extremely cheap. There are heaps
of applications where these tokens seem to be just perfect.

Strangely, the application mentioned on the website, i. e. credit
cards, is not an application the tokens are suitable for, because
having an unforgeable token simply isn't the solution to the 
credit card problem (or at least not all credit card problems). 

Nevertheless, seems to be an interesting concept.

Hadmut




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