Face Off

What will they think of next? NEC, a Japanese computer manufacturer, will be releasing two new laptops in late September with the latest in computer authentication: Facial Recognition. That’s right! These consumer laptops will use facial recognition to gain access to the machine. Insert technical jargon here: “NEC’s software, called "NeoFace," is a biometric system that uses a combination of eye zone extraction and facial recognition to identify the computer’s user. To program the system, a user sets up a profile with three photographs of their face. Then when a user tries to log on, an integrated 2.0 megapixel camera scans their facial characteristics.”

English please! What that was saying was that computer has a tiny camera that measures different parts of your face and uses those distances to come up with a “geometric” password. They say the system is smart enough to perform accurate matching even when people wear glasses and hats, have different haircuts or facial hair, and show different facial expressions.

What does this mean to me in the security field? I’ll tell you. We’ve all cracked a few passwords in our day. Fingerprint scanners are nice, but it’s still fairly easy to get someone’s print and make a cast of their finger. But how in the world do you get a hold of someone’s face!? Unless you go Sean Archer/Castor Troy on someone, this is incredibly secure.

Check out the full article here.