While facial recognition is slowly but surely replacing fingerprint recognition on our devices, we believe that the next step in terms of security is none other than vein identification.
At least theoretically, at some point in the future, smartphones should be able to detect certain elements of our hands, such as the shape, size, and location of the vein, create a pattern, store it, and then check it every time you want to authenticate yourself to make sure unauthorized access is ruled out.
While this may sound like something that can't be hacked to many, it's not the case for a group of security researchers who took part in hacking in Leipzig, Germany.
According to Motherboard, Jan Krissler and Julian Albrecht created a fake model using a total of 2,500 photos of a hand that had been previously modeled with a vein authentication system.
However, it's not really that easy. The researchers used slightly modified equipment to take the photos, including a camera without an infrared filter, to see the vein patterns.
Someone should be able to do this through some research, since taking so many photos of a hand to recreate a hand model is not very feasible and it is not the most insidious hacking method. It could be used by some individuals and even by authorities to access certain systems when needed.
At present, however, vein identification is not widespread enough, and once it reaches our devices, the system is very likely to improve significantly.
The two researchers reached out to Fujitsu and Hitachi to reveal their findings, and while Hitachi employees took a close look at the hack, Fujitsu doesn't seem to care much about it.
