Hack a Day » fingerprint

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

LCD that scans fingerprints

Caleb Kraft — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:33:34 +0000

AU Optronics Corp has unveiled a new LCD panel that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. Each pixel is equipped with 4 optical sensors, so a 320×240 screen would have a scanning resolution of 640×480. They have also experimented with different sensors, such as UV. You can see an LCD panel that detects and displays the UV index above. Why did they use a secondary display to show the data though?

[via Gearlog]

Posted in news, peripherals hacks

Avoiding OS fingerprinting in Windows

Eliot — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:26 +0000

[Irongeek] has been working on changing the OS fingerprint of his Windows box. Common network tools like Nmap, P0f, Ettercap, and NetworkMiner can determine what operating system is being run by the behavior of the TCP/IP stack. By changing this behavior, you can make your system appear to be another OS. [Irongeek] started writing his own tool by checking the source of Security Cloak to find out what registry keys needed to be changed. His OSfuscate tool lets you define your own .os fingerprint file. You can pretend to be any number of different systems from IRIX to Dreamcast. Unfortunately this only works for TCP/IP. Other methods, like Satori‘s DHCP based fingerprinting, still work and need to be bypassed by other means. Yes, this is just “security through obscurity”, but it is something fun to play with.

Posted in downloads hacks, security 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]