I find it astonishing how goalposts are moved all of a sudden. Two days ago the fingerprint reader was hyped as a great unbreakable feature ahead of its time and about to replace passwords.
Now, after the release of this video (nobody saw that coming, heh), it's all about how the fingerprint reader is better than no password at all. I think that's a deeply wrong standpoint, as this is (now) demonstrably bad security marketed as good or at least sufficient.
People will not treat it as an emergency feature they can somewhat rely on while they think of a good passphrase. The Iphone is specifically markteted as being "easy to use" for non-technical people, and those people have no idea about security. Giving them a false sense of it is not "better than nothing", it's creating a demand for this bad feature for an entire market. Sadly, most people prefer convenience over security - scratch that - they don't even consider the security part, apart from it being annoying maybe.
Writing "The group simply called “CCC”" when referring to Chaos Computer Club, one of the most important hacker collectives in the world, around for 30+ years and responsible for the largest hacker conf in Europe makes me wonder if the OP has any knowledge about the security industry in general and biometrics in particular.
[+] [-] quchen|12 years ago|reply
Now, after the release of this video (nobody saw that coming, heh), it's all about how the fingerprint reader is better than no password at all. I think that's a deeply wrong standpoint, as this is (now) demonstrably bad security marketed as good or at least sufficient.
People will not treat it as an emergency feature they can somewhat rely on while they think of a good passphrase. The Iphone is specifically markteted as being "easy to use" for non-technical people, and those people have no idea about security. Giving them a false sense of it is not "better than nothing", it's creating a demand for this bad feature for an entire market. Sadly, most people prefer convenience over security - scratch that - they don't even consider the security part, apart from it being annoying maybe.
[+] [-] verystealthy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] transfire|12 years ago|reply