Official News page 3

REAL LIFE NEWS: NO ZOMBIE FINGERS ALLOWED

by Hazed

It's a staple of Hollywood crime: the bad guys need to access something that is fingerprint-protected, so they hack off somebody's finger and take the detached digit with them to open the lock.

Now researchers have come up with a way to stop this, by checking whether the finger containing the print is alive or not. Thus, it would also defend against zombies, should that ever become necessary!

The first reported case in real life of thieves removing a finger in this way was in March 2005 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They wanted to steal a Mercedes which was protected by biometrics. At first, they dragged along the car's owner so he could start the car, but soon realized they didn't need all of him, just his finger - so they cut it off and dumped him at the roadside.

Very gruesome!

The new scanner, developed by Dermalog Identification Systems in Hamburg, Germany, can tell the difference between live and dead tissue. It uses the way that living tissue changes color when blood is squeezed out of capillaries, for example when it's pressed against the scanner. This change of color affects the light the finger absorbs. Dead tissue doesn't change in the same way, so the amount of light absorbed is different enough that the scanner can identify it.

Another organization is trying to combat a less grisly way of defeating fingerprint scanners: fake fingerprints imprinted onto rubbery gels or silicone plastic. Or, in one very famous example, a fake finger made from gelatine! Scientists at the Institute of Police Science in Lausanne, Switzerland, are working to identify the way fingerprint whorls are distorted by different kinds of moulds used to cast them, which would help to detect fakes.

If these efforts are successful, Hollywood will soon need to come up with a new way for movie villains to defeat security systems!

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128225.100-fingerprint-scanner-to-spot-the-living-dead.html

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page