Security News
The journey towards digital transformation for organizations and governments has been fraught with difficulties, resulting in some users needing to catch up as more digital services are introduced. In this Help Net Security video, Jenn Markey, VP of Payments and Identities at Entrust, talks about how biometrics, hybrid solutions, and decentralized identity are transforming the industry and the future of identity verification.
As biometric face verification gains traction and becomes more widely adopted, threat actors are targeting all systems with sophisticated online attacks. To achieve both user friendliness and security, organizations need to evaluate their biometric solutions for resilience in the face of these complex attacks.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has sued Google for allegedly collecting and using biometric data belonging to millions of Texans without proper consent. The Texas AG says that Google allegedly used products and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max to collect a vast array of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry since 2015.
In the first half of 2022, BioCatch estimates fraudulent transfers to money mule accounts totaled $3 billion and that there are approximately 2 million mule accounts in the US. Additionally, researchers found that the average mule transaction amount is $1,500 - a low amount to avoid detection when executing mule campaigns at a large scale. In this Help Net Security video, Erin Englund, Threat Analytics Lead at BioCatch, explains what money mules are, why are they becoming so prevalent, and how we can defend against them.
The Unique Identification Authority of India has backtracked on advice about how best to secure the "Aadhaar" national identity cards that enable access to a range of government and financial serivces. Privacy concerns have also been raised over whether biometric data is properly secured stored and secured, if surveillance of individuals is made possible through Aadhaar, and and possible data mining of the schemes' massive data store.
UADAI arranges for collection of the biometrics needed to create an Aadhaar - ten fingerprints, two iris scans, and a facial photograph - through enrollment agencies and registrars and provides authentication-as-a-service using Aadhaar numbers. More than a billion Aadhaar IDs have been issued and over 99 per cent of India adults have enrolled in the scheme.
The independent communications authority of South Africa has submitted a radical proposal to tackle the problem of SIM swapping attacks in the country, suggesting that local service providers should keep biometric data of cellphone number owners. SIM swapping attacks are a multi-million problem for all countries and service providers globally, allowing threat actors to port people's numbers to attackers' SIM cards, essentially hijacking the subscriber accounts.
The Italian privacy guarantor has imposed a fine of €20,000,000 on Clearview AI for implementing a biometric monitoring network in Italy without acquiring people's consent. Without ever acquiring those people's consent or informing them about the scraping of their biometric data, Clearview AI offered its clients a search service that employed artificial intelligence to match faces with identities and online activity.
Humans have far greater difficulty identifying images of biometric spoofing attacks compared to computers performing the same task, according to research released by ID R&D. The research report finds that computers are more adept than people at accurately and quickly determining whether a photo is of an actual, live person versus a presentation attack. The study tested humans and machines by presenting them with the most common spoofing techniques: printed photos, videos, digital images, and 2D or 3D masks.
The way the behavioral aspect complements biometrics could cater for safer, more reliable, and faster identification. In contrast to traditional biometrics, behavioral biometric approaches are "Younger" and less standardized.