Goodbye, Password. Banks Opt to Scan Fingers and Faces Instead

People who still not have understood

"What you are" (fingerprints / faces)

"What you have" (a token/card)

"What you know" (a password)

are different things, that you should adds up for improved security, not trade one for the other

2018 news article: Hackers steal 1.8 million fingerprint records from BigBank

Great, so now they can use those fingerprints to log into every other system that also requires my fingerprint. I guess I'll just have to change it... oh wait

It isn't what you know, but a a picture of the eye that will serve as the password, or the hashed picture of the eye.

The result is a password you don't know, but one the app or the bank can leak that you cannot change. Thus, this lowers security.

fingerprints are usernames, not passwords: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are-user...

I have massive issues with the fingerprint systems like Apple Touch ID because of my eczema. Sometimes I have to retrain as often as once a week. I'm not alone with this problem, how exactly will these systems approach people with very real challenges with fingerprints, missing eyes and other issues?

If this replaces passwords, I am quitting this industry to raise chickens in a cave.

Several banks here in Brazil have fingerprint readers in their ATMs. This makes at least two factors: what you have (the chip in your bank card, which also identifies you to the ATM) and who you are (the stored fingerprint). Depending on which operation you are doing, or on the amount of money involved, the ATM can also ask for the third factor (what you know): one or more of a numeric password, an alphabetic password (chosen from a group on the screen, so shoulder surfing just once isn't enough), the first/last three digits of your tax ID, your mother/father first name, and so on.

For phones, things aren't as advanced, though a bank manager told me that fraud happens more often when online banking is used on the computer, not on the phone. The phone is, in fact, often used as the second factor for online banking in the computer.

So, when a bank leaks my fingerprint, I can just get a new one right?

Passwords are the worst form of authentication, except for every other form.

If you want to ALLOW me to authenticate with biometrics, fine. But please for the love of security don't FORCE me to do it... And certainly don't make me use it without a second (non-biometric) form of authentication!

What could possibly go wrong.

I wonder how many of these banks currently have low character limits on their text passwords.

Is there such a thing as an insufficiently complex face?

Also what do you do if you're in a fire?

+1 to U2F: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_2nd_Factor

I've been down this road so many times and I always end up at the same conclusion. When you consider security, privacy, usability, and portability of each authentication system there are only two that are really viable. SSH keys OR Email/Password. Both of which have their flaws but have proven time and time again to be better than any of the alternatives that have been introduced over the years.

The Intel commercial with Jim Parsons exhorting the armored car drive to get a new, more secure laptop where "your face is your password" is definitely a cringeworthy moment, not just because of its ignorance, but because of how mainstream it is (plastered all over the NBA Finals).

"Who are you?" is the most expensive question in information technology. No matter how you get it wrong, you're fucked.

Passwords suck. But virtually everything else sucks far worse.

Biometrics, as many have already noted, 1) aren't passwords, 2) are usernames, 3) aren't universally present, 4) aren't immutable, 5) retain the problem of having to be stored as data to be verified, 6) aren't replaceable, and 7) can still be stolen, copied, faked, or otherwise misrepresented. At the very least. (Is there a "Myths programmers believe about biometric identifiers" page yet, because there needs to be one?)

Attesting to identity is a long-lived problem, though one that's changed through the ages largely in the scale of how many people it applies to and in what priveleges are granted based on attested identity.

Absent some alternative of a convenient, replaceable, inexpensive, repudiable, and effective portable token of some sort, I don't think the identification problem is ultimately solveable.

Electronic data are fundamentally different from data-on-physical-media. Electronic information tend, as Quinn Norton noted, to deleted or public -- those are the only possible end-states.

(Arguably paper-based records do as well, though the ratio of deleted to public is far higher.)

Electronic information lacks mass, and the attributes of mass. It has no, or very, very little, inertia. It can be transmitted around the globe in a fraction of a second. Multi-gigabyte, approaching terabyte storage, is now possible on fingernail-sized devices.

Data transactions unlike financial ones aren't reversible. It's possible to reverse or undo a financial transaction. The seen cannot be unseen, the heard cannot be unheard. Backing out data disclosures is not possible.

The World Wide Web was created as an information distribution system, specifically for academics. It's been extended far past that, but the fit has quite often been very, very poor.

There's a strong benefit to in-person physical transactions. There's a very high locality cost: getting to, and being present in, a specific location will cost you. Current rates are approximately $0.50 per mile traversed, plus other considerations. Being present in multiple locations simultaneously (or even in brief time) is exceptionally difficult to arrange. Physical reality has high attack costs.

Data presents low attack costs, and increasingly, highly appealing targets.

Devices, systems, users, administrators, vendors, and more, all exhibit exceptionally poor practices.

As one comment on this thread states, "If this replaces passwords, I am quitting this industry to raise chickens in a cave." To which I respond: stay out of my cave.

Because I'm already there.

Great, now you can't change the password without getting surgery.