New IBM Thinkpad includes biometrics

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 20:10, Anton Stiglic wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/05/biometric_thinkpad_t42/
> 
> I wonder how well it can counter the attacks discussed by researchers in the
> last few years.  Like reactivating a fingerprint authentication by breathing
> on the sensor's surface containing residue fat traces of the finger, or
> placing a bag of water.  Or the jelly finger trick.
> The biometric authentication might very well make the laptop less secure
> than password-based authentication.

one of the market targets of biometrics has been those that write their
password on their machine (or don't even bother with a password).

in the past, it seems that biometrics have tried to make a big thing of
how much more secure that it might be than passwords ... in part because
it was so much more expensive. 

however, "significantly more secure than passwords" ... doesn't
necessarily have to be the market target.

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/


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