Microsoft is the pioneer of iris scanners for mobile phones, as the company was one of the first to introduce this revolutionary technology to smartphones (specifically the Lumia 950) in October 2015, and now it seems to be exploring ways to improve it in the future.
The company recently created an iris scanner that could very well be hacker-proof, since it can tell the difference between a person's iris and a high-resolution photo of the iris.
Recently, security researchers discovered that these security systems can be easily bypassed by scanning HD photos of users, with facial and iris recognition systems proving vulnerable to such attempts.
What Microsoft is trying to do is create a technology that will exploit the three-dimensional structure of the human eye, with special cameras that will be able to illuminate the iris before the scanning process.
These cameras will then be used to take photos of the eye at different points, and analyze the 3D structure from multiple angles, trying to determine not only whether the user should be granted access, but also whether the scan is being made on a person or a photo of a person.
Although this new technology is still in the testing phase, Microsoft could use it as a means to improve Windows Hello on future devices. Of course, one of the first devices that comes to mind that could benefit from the new iris scanner is the new Surface Phone, a device that we don't know for sure if it exists but we all hope to see later this year or early 2018.
