Brain wallet password based on fingerprint?

[Chris!]

firstly
smart phones get handled.
so if you steal a smart phone then with a bit of dustpowder and some tape you can literally get the fingerprint from the screen of the same device you want to raid.

secondly
finger prints are not exact.
there are hundreds of 'indicators' on a finger, but get a papercut a few of them change/disapear, get old or fat and it changes. get calluses from hard labour work, a few of them change/disapear. use chemicals as a janitor on your hands in an accident, a few of them change/disapear
this is why the threshold for 'comparison' in criminal evidence is so low at a 6-12 indicator points because getting ALL indicators will never be possible.
meaning you cannot rely on hand picking just 6-12 indicators last year, hoping they will still be there in a few years. criminal finger print comparison looks at MANY indicators (above threshold) from an old sample and hope to find just 6-12 indicators on a newer sample

thirdly
retina scans are not perfect either.. diabetes, catacts, blindness, and other conditions can 'blur' the image obtained from a retina scan..

fourthly
identifyers in your head (password) is much safer than identifyers on your finger. imagine it this way. having fingerprint ID is like shouting out your email password every time you touch a light switch, cutlery, a bottle, even the tv remote.

in short trying to solve a security issue by making is stupidly easy for others to get hold of with some tools, or worse case eventually lose you access to due to nature purely based on laziness of someone clicking a few buttons and thinking about safe storage(using their brain).. is ultimately not a solution to security

it made the title laughable.. brain wallet without the brain....
you may like my next pun..

ill give this idea my middle finger

You have a lot of excellent points there. I have a scar on one of my fingers and often wondered if my fingerprint would be different now. Also, with your eyes deteriorating over years it could change the scan.

Clearly what we need is a private key somehow based on your DNA then we're all set!

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[SmartIphone]

I just had an idea. What if there is a tool which algorithms create a brain wallet password from the fingerprint (or from multiple fingerprints of the hand)? Every fingerprint is unique. Therefore every password created by the algos will be unique, too.
Thus, one would never run into the risk of losing his or her password anymore. Perhaps there is something already. However, I do not know it.

Even if the wallet password is based on the fingerprint there should be always an alternative to unlock it like the phones.
Sometimes you can't put your fingerprint and you enter a password and unlock it(like the laptop,phone etc), which is still not 100% secure.

[Red-Apple]

I just had an idea. What if there is a tool which algorithms create a brain wallet password from the fingerprint (or from multiple fingerprints of the hand)? Every fingerprint is unique. Therefore every password created by the algos will be unique, too.
Thus, one would never run into the risk of losing his or her password anymore. Perhaps there is something already. However, I do not know it.

Even if the wallet password is based on the fingerprint there should be always an alternative to unlock it like the phones.
Sometimes you can't put your fingerprint and you enter a password and unlock it(like the laptop,phone etc), which is still not 100% secure.

i think as others has mentioned before in the first two pages using fingerprint for your password as a kind of brain wallet is far from secure. and i think it is only more like a cool idea rather than a practical and secure one.
just like brain wallet itself, you can still make a private key using a sentence or a simple 123 password using brain wallet code but that never was secure and i think this one is not either.

[Tasssty]

But still, since you leave your prints in tons of locations everyday, You can't really say a fingerprint is a good password since you put it on everything you touch, Unlike a password or a number which can be pretty unique and unpredictable.

[Dudeperfect]

I am not sure this is great idea or not but since I’m from India and we have unique resident identification system that means government have our data not only regarding financial or social aspects but also our photographs, records and even fingerprints, eyeball photographs etc. That is critical case if we implement any such credential unlocking system.

I strongly believe not our data is not safe not only talking about Indian government but also any government of any corner of the world.

[calkob]

these forms of identification are not always 100 per cent accurate.  some times they give false positives

[streazight]

if people are adament they want fingerprint technology to be used, atleast make it workable
afterall, people have 10 fingers

i would suggest a method that has 10 keys(one per finger). but only needs lets say 3 keys to move funds.(3 of 10 multisig)
that way any of your 3 fingers would be accepted.

but just a 1 finger one key is not a good way to secure funds especially due to chemical burns, papercuts, age and other things that can affect a fingerprint

That's actually feasible and a lot better than just having one finger print as a key.
My index finger has actually changed it's print since the I accidentally cut the surface of it with a cutter when I was cutting potatoes. It now has these little broken lines that used to be a line before, and some parts have random prints on them.

[coindancer]

i'm not sure on this one, but i have read that there are people with the same fingerprint. this is rare but still not cool. but as i mentioned i'm not sure and i might only be the software that thinks they are the same. this was some years ago so it might have changed.

[vero]

I just had an idea. What if there is a tool which algorithms create a brain wallet password from the fingerprint (or from multiple fingerprints of the hand)? Every fingerprint is unique. Therefore every password created by the algos will be unique, too.
Thus, one would never run into the risk of losing his or her password anymore. Perhaps there is something already. However, I do not know it.

it's a good idea but whether it can work well and something that is impossible to use the fingerprints as security of bitcoin wallet, in fact this way will be a little tricky.

[Doamader]

i'm not sure on this one, but i have read that there are people with the same fingerprint. this is rare but still not cool. but as i mentioned i'm not sure and i might only be the software that thinks they are the same. this was some years ago so it might have changed.

Banks already use that technology and the result is people are loosing their fingers, soo i dont like it, several people complaint cant acess their accounts because machine didnt read well the fingers, bitcoin doesnt need such, there is already enought security around bitcoin wallets.

[Lauda]

i'm not sure on this one, but i have read that there are people with the same fingerprint. this is rare but still not cool.

AFAIK these cases are very rare, even twins don't have identical fingerprints. The chances of you meeting somebody with the exact set of fingerprints are ridiculously low.

FINGERPRINTS ARE NOT PASSWORDS. FINGERPRINTS ARE USERNAMES.

Seems like most of the signature spam is just ignoring this, or doesn't understand it at all. I doubt that they've even read your post in the first place.

I never said this is the only factor that gives security. A large address space is necessary, but not sufficient, for bitcoin security.

Fair point. I was just under that impression after reading the statement. Sorry for the missunderstanding.

[keaderza]

Brain wallets are good because they are unpredictable, you don't know what the person that made the password was thinking, opposite to prints, although they are unique they are so easy to get that it would make awful security. you literally leave your password everywhere you touch.

[davis196]

I just had an idea. What if there is a tool which algorithms create a brain wallet password from the fingerprint (or from multiple fingerprints of the hand)? Every fingerprint is unique. Therefore every password created by the algos will be unique, too.
Thus, one would never run into the risk of losing his or her password anymore. Perhaps there is something already. However, I do not know it.

This isn`t very inovative.

Some people are developing fingerprint wallets for online bank accounts and offline shopping.

This will replace debit and credit cards.

This is the future,i guess.

[Akupuniard]

Good for paranoids, i can't understand why people is always scared about hackers in 2016, when almost everywhere you can avoid them or just block you wallet?

[Lauda]

Brain wallets are good because they are unpredictable, you don't know what the person that made the password was thinking

Nonsense. Human thinking is predictable, their password habits are usually weak/horrible and the adjective simplistic can be used for the majority as well.

Brain wallets can be easily bruteforced.

Indeed.

Humans are really bad at being truly random.

I concur. They're also very bad at probabilities, hence why we get people from time to time worrying about address collision.

Some people are developing fingerprint wallets for online bank accounts and offline shopping.

Replacing passwords with fingerprints is not safer.

Good for paranoids, i can't understand why people is always scared about hackers in 2016, when almost everywhere you can avoid them or just block you wallet?

Stating this, after we've experienced one of the largest 'hacks' (it's debatable what exactly happened, but let's ignore that since discussing it would be off-topic) in the history of Bitcoin, is very ignorant and ridiculous.

[thejaytiesto]

I don't think this is a good idea to be honest. All those iris, fingertip, voice... all those biometric type of security solutions aren't real solutions to me.

Like let's say you get a fingerprint based password for your brain wallet seed pass phrase. And you someday have an accident, like you burn your hand while cooking or some shit. This would result in a fingertip that is no longer what is stored to decipher the password. And now you are stuck with a wallet that cannot be recovered and 6 months of rehabilitation to heal your finger.

[tyz]

Like let's say you get a fingerprint based password for your brain wallet seed pass phrase. And you someday have an accident, like you burn your hand while cooking or some shit.

If you argument this way, then there is absolutely no secure way. Of course, there is no 100% secure way at all. You can also store your brain wallet password on a stick or print it on a paper, nonetheless, the stick could get damage or the paper wallet could get burned or get accidently lost.