Fingerprints are not passwords, but I don't think it's useful to think of them as usernames either.<p>This is a much more pragmatic take on it by Troy Hunt, the person behind “Have I been pwned?”: <a href="https://www.troyhunt.com/face-id-touch-id-pins-no-id-and-pragmatic-security/" rel="nofollow">https://www.troyhunt.com/face-id-touch-id-pins-no-id-and-pra...</a><p>> The first point I'll make here as I begin talking about the 3 main security constructs available is that they're all <i>differently</i> secure.
Why is this getting reposted? I’d argue this is very shortsighted especially coming from a security professional. TouchID has been a huge leap forward in consumer device security.<p>Security design must take into account usability. Fingerprints (and now faces) make it easy to use stronger passcodes. If you don’t use biometrics, people use weak passcodes. That’s clearly a worse outcome.<p>Sure, it’s even stronger to not use biometrics and enter a strong high entropy passcode every time you want to unlock your phone. But to actually advise something like that as a better approach in a consumer device than TouchID is simply to advocate a guaranteed worse security outcome. Maybe you “cover your ass” as a security acolyte and blame the compromised user for not following your stringent prescriptions, but that’s not owning the outcome. You have to consider usability.
No, they're really not either. The whole username vs. password debate is like asking whether the key to your house is a username or password.<p>Biometrics are used as the key that unlocks a device (or app or asset within the device). And like the house they require physical proximity. And, yes, just like the house key there's a decent chance that someone who lives near you has the same key type (device type -- apple/samsung/lg/etc.) and keying (fingerprint data points) on their front door (phone).<p>But those odds are basically irrelevant as an attack surface.<p>For a native app on a phone the "username" is proxied to the device id, once linked to the user.<p>I think the article being 4 years old reflects a 4-year-old fear of the new and misapprehension of where security problems would arise in the future on biometrically locked phones.
Original author here. This article is more pertinent today than ever before!<p>Your face is your username, not your password.<p>Use it like you use your username. But never as something secret, personal, unknown like your password.<p>The same goes for any biometric. Fingerprints, voice, iris, gait, DNA, etc. No matter how much they try to sell you authentication through biometrics, it's total b.s.<p>@DustinKirkland
Fingerprints are tokens, just like usernames and passwords.<p>Oddly enough, from a trust calculus standpoint usernames are not particularly valuable; we could do away with them entirely and the logic of authentication wouldn't change (though usernames add some very nice logistics that from a practical standpoint we don't want to give up).<p>At a very basic level, a single token suffices to authenticate: something you have, know, or are does prove you are who you claim to be (usernames just give a convenient handle to that). So, a 1TP from a fob, a password, or a fingerprint at a very basic level is enough.
This overly simplifies things. Passwords are primary authentication, biometrics are secondary authentication. Biometrics should only be used when a password has already been established, and then only as a shortcut to entering that password; furthermore, authenticating via biometrics should put one into a limited-access state that disallows tampering with primary authentication mechanisms. The result is that anyone spoofing a fingerprint would be unable to completely own another device.<p>The tradeoffs inherent to this are well-described elsewhere: a lower degree of absolute security in exchange for a higher proportion of users with <i>any security at all</i>; in lieu of the convenience offered by biometric authentication, enormous swaths of users leave themselves wide open. And since biometrics are just a convenience, anyone who does require absolute security can easily choose to forgo them entirely.
Thoroughly agree, though more from a philosophical standpoint. I would argue using biometrics as passwords removes an element of intent.<p>A fingerprint can be used against your will; it is significantly harder to be forced to use a password that exists only in your mind.
I see this argument a lot, but I don't really see it accompanied by an argument about what the passwords should be. Companies are gravitating toward biometric authentication methods because consumers have "password fatigue". They can't memorize a long secure password for every site, app, and device, so they resort to using a single password everywhere (which may or may not be displayed on a postit note stuck to their monitor).<p>All this article offers is:<p>> For authentication, you need a password or passphrase. Something that can be independently chosen, changed, and rotated.<p>Okay, so fingerprints aren't passwords, but what we need instead are passwords, which we know don't work either. Best practices for password security are ignored by consumers because they're onerous, and biometric authentication seems to be insecure by default. What's the solution then?
Something you have. Something you know. Something you are.<p>The problem with the third factor has always been a balance between cost, inconvenience and how easy it is to turn it into just another something an attacker has.<p>Retinographic analysis is gold standard but it's hellishly expensive. Fingerprints can be copied. Easily. Facial and behavioural analysis sit somewhere in the middle, with too much scope for false negatives.<p>So fingerprints aren't a username or password because they're not that factor... But used alone, they can be as weak as a username, in many senses.
This argument seems especially dated in retrospect. Since Apple introduced Touch ID in 2013, I can't recall even <i>one single case</i> of criminals or law enforcement using biometrics to access someone's iPhone. Same for any other phone manufacturer.
Agree about fingerprints, as they are left around everywhere and thus easy to capture. However, FaceID should be significantly better. As Apple talked about, FaceID only works when your eyes are open and also tested/hardened against modeling.
this is a common argument by those who do not understand biometrics<p>a biometric is a username <i>and</i> a password<p>- yes, i know the purpose is to say that the biometric should be used as a password, but that changes the declarative statement quite a bit in my opinion
Yes, but the author preaching to the choir. The real problem here is educating the public at large as to why it's insecure and in what situations biometrics are unacceptable.
Discussion at the time (257 comments):<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6477505" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6477505</a>
I'd rather use my fingerprint on my phone than have a hacker look at the finger oil smudge patterns on the glass to decipher my password. And with my fingerprint I don't need to worry about hiding my password entry.
I'm don't even like the idea of biometrics for user names. I don't want malicious actors to easily correlate distinct accounts (this guy's fingerprint has an account at Facebook, Reddit, Chase Bank, ...).
+1 on this<p>though I use fingerprints on my laptop, I'm quite aware that it's really easy to leave any fingerprint anywhere<p>(I use it because I type slow)