Stephen Mason, an Australian optometrist, has discovered a new way to use people's tear ducts as passwords, which he calls "the world's first one-time secret code.".
He focused on the cornea, rather than the iris, which is the norm in most optical scanners, because criminals Cyber They cannot copy the unique way tears change in the eyes.
The scanner can identify a person this way because each cornea has its own unique map. But if a criminal wants to steal and use data from the first time a person logged in, the machine may not correctly identify that person because it expects the data to change slightly from time to time.
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""The surface of the cornea is moist with tears, so our data changes from time to time," he said. "In every dataset I capture from each eye, there are very small variations.".
The hope is that the technology will be incorporated into smartphones, from where it can be used to authenticate payments and access online services such as email or sensitive documents online. It could also be embedded in ATM machines or doors leading to restricted areas.
From intimate photos stolen and uploaded online from iCloud accounts to the attack on Home Depot, which was the largest security breach ever recorded at a retail chain, the rise in cybercrime has experts looking for better ways to verify people's identities.
Simple passwords remain the best way for individuals to protect their data, but many experts and technology companies believe this is an outdated form of protection, and are turning to biometric alternatives.
Identity X, a US security firm, is using voice recognition as one of the means of identifying people trying to access banking services remotely. Barclays Bank plans to launch scanners in the UK that will identify certain corporate customers using the vein map in their fingers.
Data theft
Companies that use more conventional fingerprint readers include Apple (which has them in the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6), Samsung, which included such a scanner in the latest Galaxy model, and Lenovo, the Chinese computer manufacturer that used them in its Thinkpad series of laptops.
Vinny Sackor, director of cloud security at International Computer Security Association Labs, a security testing firm, said passwords are probably the main reason why system breaches occur.
One concern about existing biometric security systems is the risk of data theft. According to Mason, it is unknown what fingerprints could be used for in the future.
But biometric technology isn't the only potential solution. Many startups are trying to solve the same security problem, from password managers that store encrypted passwords and enter them into every website, to hardware that includes hard-to-crack codes.
Sackor warned that biometric technology is not yet mature and suffers from various problems. For example, it does not work when a person's fingers are swollen.
