What's worse than a password?

Rambus Blog, Dec. 09, 2015 – 

Did you know that a September 2015 US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) system breach resulted in 5.6 million leaked fingerprints?

"We've all seen movies that included a clever way to get someone's fingerprints, and I never thought much about it," Jimmy Pike, an analyst Moor Insights & Strategy, wrote in Forbes. "Now a huge number of these biometric signatures are in the dark side of society."

Indeed, as HackADay's Elliot Williams recently noted, fingerprints are even worse than passwords and should never be substituted for the former.

"Passwords are supposed to be secret. In contrast, you carry your fingers around with you out in the open nearly everywhere you go. Passwords also need to be revocable," he explained. "In the case that your password does get revealed, it's great to be able to simply pick another one. You don't want to have to revoke your fingers. You [also] want your password to be hashable, in order to protect the password database itself from theft."

 Back