Possible Death of the Password
A Sydney Morning Herald columnist writes that with facial recognition technology being developed, passwords could be a thing of a past. However, the question that everyone’s asking is whether or not the technology will be adopted. There are some who are all for it and others who remain very sceptical.
In Dublin, Ireland there are a group of people who are working on a program that uses facial recognition as an authentication method. The program that they are developing was dubbed as Viv.ie. Cofounder Niall Paterson claims that Viv.ie will destroy passwords. Viv.ie is scheduled to be released in August this year. Any website that trials Viv.ie will use the program via the user’s webcam.
Australian security expert James Turner, of IBRS, is very much interested in the ideas that Viv.ie presents. He said the entire concept of a password is redundant and obsolete. With the number of accounts a person is tied in this day and age, remembering every single password has become an inefficient way of authentication. Passwords have become very inconvenient and slow and the security industry is desperate to find an alternative. Biometrics (the science that facial recognition is under) is fast becoming an appealing option.
If the technology can get there, facial recognition would be harder to hack than passwords, they would be faster and more efficient to implement and, with enough accuracy, they will be more reliable; after all, anyone can type in your password but no one has your exact face.
However many are still sceptical on whether or not the technology can advance to this point. In October last year, Google introduced its new smartphone operating system “Ice Cream Sandwich”. One new feature it had in its inventory was a facial recognition software. Though, not soon after its appearance, many had found flaws in the program, pointing out that it could easily be fooled with only a photo of the user. This meant that the phone could be hacked with a mere picture.
Many are saying that if tech-giants such as Google cannot perfect the software then what’s to say that anyone else could.
However, many remain hopeful. The idea is of biometric authentication is secure; the technology just needs to catch up. When that will be is hard to say.
Email us ! | Resources | News
