News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

German hackers publish minister’s fingerprints

Monday, March 31, 2008

The Chaos Computer Club published the fingerprint of German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble. The organization has been active in opposition to Germany’s increasing push to use biometrics in e-passports.

Schäuble’s fingerprints were captured from a glass he drank from at a panel discussion. The club published 4,000 copies of their magazine Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing the minister’s fingerprint — ready to glue to someone else’s finger. The club also has a page on their site detailing how to make fake fingerprint. The article says a ministry spokesman alluded to possible legal action against the club.

Read the full story here. [end] 

Related Articles
Japanese police nab Chinese woman with altered fingerprints

In their investigation of a Chinese woman accused of credit card theft, Japanese police discovered that the woman had had her fingerprints surgically altered, according to an Epoch Time article. The woman, named Lin Xiuai, confessed to having a special clinic China perform the surgery to have her fingerprints changed for the equivalent of just under $4,500 due to wanting to enter Japan and having being arrested there in 2001 for suspicion of illegally entering the country. The surgery was successful enough that it enabled her to pass the biometric checkpoints at the airport.

read more »
German Government to deploy SCM smart cards in nationwide campaign

As a result of the new electronic identification program rolled out by Germany, SCM Microsystems has announced that more than 700,000 of its contactless smart card readers will be released for use in the country. The provider of secure access solutions and business unit of Identitive Group Inc. are providing free IT Security Kits to promote security amongst German citizens.

read more »
Biometric locks foiled by hacker team

At the Def Con Hacking Conference in Las Vegas, a team of three physical lock hackers successfully cracked fingerprint-based locks among some other high-tech door and safe locks, according to a Wired article.

read more »
Germany taps NXP for national ID smart card chips

NXP Semiconductors announced that its SmartMX secure contactless microcontroller chip has been chosen to power the new German contactless National Identity card.

The German government has selected NXP as the supplier of an inlay solution containing a SmartMX chip, packaged in an ultra-thin module. Issuance of German contactless ID cards, which will replace the current paper-based IDs, will start in November. More than 60 million cards are expected to be rolled out over the next ten years.

read more »
German BSI certifies EAC inspection system

HJP Consulting has completed the German BSI certification process of the Extended Access Control (EAC) e-passport inspection system “Regula series 7004,” manufactured by Regula Baltija Ltd., based in Latvia. The Regula inspection system is an EAC inspection system to be certified according to the test standard BSI-TR 3105 part 5.1 “Test plan for ICAO compliant Inspection Systems with EAC 1.11.”

read more »
VASCO advises schools to secure their online platforms

More schools are now using online platforms to distribute and exchange information, such as course documents and online tests. These same online platforms also serve as an administrative tool, containing personal data on students and staff. To prevent identity and data theft, online applications used by schools and universities need to be protected.

read more »

Copyright © 2010, AVISIAN, Inc. All rights reserved.