Biometrics is the key to defeating Bitcoin hackers!

[DrBitcoin]

In my opinion, biometric technologies like apples touch ID is the solution to Bitcoin hackers on major exchanges. Imagine Coinbase or Bitpay had a user enabled feature that requires your fingerprint in order to confirm any Bitcoin transactions.

Then, a hacker would need to get into your account, defeat two factor authentication... and have acess to your fingerprint to confirm any transaction requests.

Obviously, this could be a user enabled feature that conspiracy theorists or people looking to just be anonymous could opt out of.

If Apple were to open up its touch ID to third parties, this would be the best offering. But for the meanwhile, can't a website like coinbase allow you to buy a third-party fingerprint scanner?

[bobalo]

Not everyone has a finger scanner...

[substratum]

This is no better than OTP 2FA; both are worthless if your machine is infected by man-in-the-browser (MitB) malware. If you haven't been following banking malware trends you may not be aware - thieves have been bypassing 2FA easily for quite some time. Transaction Integrity Verification (TIV) using an offline device is the only way to defeat theft by MitB malware.

[ArticMine]

Apple touch ID is a perfect example of Security Theatre  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater, as was demonstrated by the Chaos Computer Club http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid. It is completely useless to secure against Bitcoin hackers who are more often than not far more competent than Apple in security.

[hilariousandco]

I think Biometrics would be a worthy two/third-factor authentication as long as they were implemented properly and safe.

[hellscabane]

You know, you may actually be onto something here. The problem is how to make this process seamless and safe. There are several major companies trying to incorporate biometrics with their security practices and it could behoove BTC if several major exchanges/applications incorporate it.

Once again though, the problem is making the process seamless and safe.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

[Yogafan00000]

The problem with biometrics is that once your scan data has been compromised by data thieves, you can't change any of it.

[hazek]

They key to defeat hackers are secure hardware wallets, you'd imagine we'd have one by now. I'm still waiting on Trezor to ship and am hopeful it will be everything it needs to be - we'll see. Any updates slush?

[hellscabane]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

This is the difficulty in making biometrics seamless and safe.

One of the biggest issues is that unimodal biometric systems lack robustness. On the other hand, strictly multimodal biometric systems are very robust but they lack the seamlessness of unimodal systems. There has been work done on creating an adaptive multimodal system which uses probabilities to account for changes that the human body encounters but the difficulty is in trusting the robustness of the probabilities and securities of multi-level gaming of the systems.

[seriouscoin]

Not to mention fingerprints are every easy to steal.... yeah....

We still dont have robust technology for this application yet. For ex: eye scanning is so damn slow.

[seriouscoin]

They key to defeat hackers are secure hardware wallets, you'd imagine we'd have one by now. I'm still waiting on Trezor to ship and am hopeful it will be everything it needs to be - we'll see. Any updates slush?

About Trezor.... when will they have it ready? i really cant wait

[hazek]

They key to defeat hackers are secure hardware wallets, you'd imagine we'd have one by now. I'm still waiting on Trezor to ship and am hopeful it will be everything it needs to be - we'll see. Any updates slush?

About Trezor.... when will they have it ready? i really cant wait

Would be nice to know, I agree.

[hilariousandco]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

DNA scanning is even more far-fetched, but could be fun. Imagine licking or spitting into something before you could send your Bitcoins  . I'm sure there'll be fingerprint Bitcoin apps at some point.

[seriouscoin]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

DNA scanning is even more far-fetched, but could be fun. Imagine licking or spitting into something before you could send your Bitcoins  . I'm sure there'll be fingerprint Bitcoin apps at some point.

Altho DNA is unique (all 13 pairs) but its not guaranteed to stay the same.

[substratum]

The long and short of it is this: there's no method you can use to authenticate yourself to a remote website via an infected computer that man-in-the-browser malware can't hijack en-route and use in order to pretend to be you. Instead you need to validate the integrity of your transactions on a separate device. That's what Cronto does for banks and that's what Trezor does for Bitcoin wallets.

[hilariousandco]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

DNA scanning is even more far-fetched, but could be fun. Imagine licking or spitting into something before you could send your Bitcoins  . I'm sure there'll be fingerprint Bitcoin apps at some point.

Altho DNA is unique (all 13 pairs) but its not guaranteed to stay the same.

Are you saying peoples DNA changes?

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

I already spoke to some of the devs, they quickly proved me wrong that biometrics are viable. They said for instance, that fingerprints are not the same throughout the whole life, they change and are are not as accurate all the time. I also tried saying ok what about a DNA scan, proved me wrong again.

DNA scanning is even more far-fetched, but could be fun. Imagine licking or spitting into something before you could send your Bitcoins  . I'm sure there'll be fingerprint Bitcoin apps at some point.

Altho DNA is unique (all 13 pairs) but its not guaranteed to stay the same.

Are you sating peoples DNA changes?

I think I read somewhere that throughout a person's life, he has many mutations in his DNA.

[franky1]

In my opinion, biometric technologies like apples touch ID is the solution to Bitcoin hackers on major exchanges. Imagine Coinbase or Bitpay had a user enabled feature that requires your fingerprint in order to confirm any Bitcoin transactions.

Then, a hacker would need to get into your account, defeat two factor authentication... and have acess to your fingerprint to confirm any transaction requests.

Obviously, this could be a user enabled feature that conspiracy theorists or people looking to just be anonymous could opt out of.

If Apple were to open up its touch ID to third parties, this would be the best offering. But for the meanwhile, can't a website like coinbase allow you to buy a third-party fingerprint scanner?

as others have said biometrics is not easy.
1. not everyone has/wants a fingerprint scanner.
2. if i cut my thump and it left a scar, the thumbprint wont match the one on the exchanges database
3. a trojan horse could sniff the data input of a USB port to copy the persons thump print and then use it later.. much like keyloggers sniff usb keyboards.
4. the actual lesson to learn is to teach people not to use exchanges as long term bank accounts.

[Rawted]

I have been tinkering with this idea for quite some time. Multi tiered personal security appliances. Split into packages according to their security level (from basic to advanced). Can be used separately or combined together like Voltron to produce the ultimate personal security device.

The drafts for my idea have something like

level 1: fingerprint and/or voice
level 2: level 1 + retinal
level 3: level 2 + laser dna  (think http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8379664 but compact)

The amount of engineering to put this idea into production is way out of my league, however.