Hack a Day » biometric

Cheap(er) biometric gun safe

Jakob Griffith — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:00:34 +0000

[Greg] sent in his biometric pistol safe lock. He keeps his guide light on details so not every Joe can crack the system (there is a thread to sift through if you really wanted to), but the idea runs fairly simple anyway. [Greg] took an old garage door opening fingerprint scanner and wired it into a half broken keypad based pistol safe. While he did have some issues finding a signal that only fired when the correct fingerprint is scanned, a little magic with a CMOS HEX inverter fixed that problem quick.

This does bring one question to our minds, are fingerprint scanners as easy to crack as fingerprint readers?

Filed under: security hacks

Pulse Oximeter

Mike Szczys — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:25:14 +0000

[Mike] is building his own Pulse Oximeter which uses light to measure the oxygen saturation in blood. One collateral benefit of this measurement is that pulse rate can be calculated from the same data. The parts used for the detector include a red LED, infrared LED, and a TSL230R light intensity measuring chip. As explained in the video above, each LED is shined through the tip of your finger and onto the light sensor. The IR LED is used as a baseline and compared to the red LED, which has some of its intensity absorbed by the red blood in your finger. This is a pretty approachable biometric concept so you may want to start here before moving on to more involved biometric interfaces.

[Thanks Russ]

Posted in Medical hacks

The Narcisystem

Caleb Kraft — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:22:28 +0000

The Narcisystem is part of an art display where [Eric] strapped himself to as many biometric sensors as he could. The core of the system was a Funnel IO which includes an Arduino, Xbee plug, and LiPo charging circuit. It was collecting data from a heart rate monitor, an EEG, a breathalyzer, compass, and an accelerometer. This data was sent to a laptop and then sent to different displays. You can see the setup functioning in a video after the break. The red flashes are his heart beat, the blue light is the direction he’s facing. What you can’t see is the high power bass thud every time he takes a step. The EEG data was supposed to effect the tempo of the music, but it failed and was dropped, as was the fog machine based on his blood alcohol level. He notes that he wanted to do more, but was lacking the hardware.

Posted in arduino hacks, classic hacks, Medical hacks

Biometric locks turned trojan

Caleb Kraft — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:31:00 +0000

In the same vein as our recent Defcon article on biometric cloning, White Wolf Security has released this article about turning a biometric door lock into a trojan. They note that there are many common ways to break into one, from harvesting fingerprints to using gummy bears to fake a finger. This hack involves having full access to the unit so you can disassemble it.

The unit has a system built-in where you can touch a 9-volt battery to some connectors on the bottom to power it in case of a building power failure. The researchers simply routed some wires from the motorized lock to the plates used for the 9-volt and then reassembled the lock. The door can then be opened at any time without verification, even if the software on the unit is reset.

[Thanks, dwight]

Defcon 16: Biometric cloning

Eliot — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:40:00 +0000

One of the more novel talks we saw at Defcon was [Zac Franken] presenting on access control systems. He covered several different types, but the real fun was his live demo of bypassing a hand geometry scanners like the one pictured above. With the help of two assistants, 4 pounds of chromatic dental alginate, and 5 liters of water, he made a mold of his hand. The box he placed his hand in had markings to show where the pegs on the scanner are located. After 2 minutes he could remove his hand from the cavity. They then filled the mold with vinylpolysiloxane, making sure to remove all bubbles. 20 minutes later the hand was solid and passed the scanner’s test. This may not be a completely practical attack, but it does defeat the overall idea of biometrics; biometrics are built on the assumption that every person is unique and can’t have their features reproduced.

[Zac] also showed an interesting magnetic card spoofer that emulated all three tracks using coils of magnet wire. We hope to see more about that in the future.

[photo: morgan.davis]