Master Keys for Fingerprints and Voices

I swear I’ve written about “MasterPrints” before, but I can’t find any such article. Maybe I just discussed it internally at IDEMIA when I worked there in 2018.

Generative adversarial network produces a “universal fingerprint” that will unlock many smartphones

“Researchers at NYU and U Michigan have published a paper explaining how they used a pair of machine-learning systems to develop a “universal fingerprint” that can fool the lowest-security fingerprint sensors 76% of the time (it is less effective against higher-security sensors).

“The researchers used “generative adversarial networks” (GAN) to develop their attack: this technique uses a pair of machine learning systems, a “generator” which tries to fool a “discriminator,” to produce a kind of dialectical back-and-forth in that creates fakes that are harder and harder to detect.”

While this happened over seven years ago and is probably harder to implement with today’s technology, I was reminded of this when I ran across this Biometric Update article.

Voice morphing attack blends identities to bypass voice biometrics: study

“A new research paper explores a signal-level approach to voice morphing attacks that exposes vulnerabilities in biometric voice recognition systems.

“The abstract describes Time-domain Voice Identity Morphing (TD-VIM) as “a novel approach for voice-based biometric morphing” which “enables the blending of voice characteristics from two distinct identities at the signal level.” TD-VIM allows for seamless voice morphing directly in the time domain, allowing “identity blending without any embeddings from the backbone, or reference text.””

So it, um, sounds like we not only have MasterPrints, but also MasterVoices.

Passive Voice Liveness Detection

How do you detect a fake voice?

As with other biometrics, you can use either active or passive voice liveness detection.

Daon describes the latter:

“Unlike active liveness, which asks the user to complete an action (like…saying a phrase), passive liveness analyzes the content of a user’s…voice biometric input via AI neural networks that assess elements like…audio artifacts, and…the pitch, tone, and cadence of the user’s voice….”

Who Can Write My Biometric Company’s Product Marketing Content?

Someone who is a biometric product marketing expert.

Someone who has three decades of expertise in biometrics.

I remember ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993.

Someone who has worked with fingerprints, faces, irises, voices, DNA, and other biometric modalities.

Some modalities. Butts and tongues not included.

Someone who understands the privacy landscape in Europe (GDPR), Illinois (BIPA), California, and elsewhere.

BIPA is a four-letter word.

Oh…and someone who can write.

A slight exaggeration.

So who can write this stuff?

I know someone. Bredemarket.

Some great videos


Biometric product marketing expert.
Questions.
Services, process, and pricing.

Which Biometric Modalities Does NIST Investigate?

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bredemarket blog looking at a variety of NIST studies of different biometric modalities.

But you can read up on them yourself.

NIST has investigated the following biometric modalities, using both definitions of the word biometrics:

But NIST has not spent taxpayer money researching other biometric modalities, such as tongue identification.

Biometric product marketing expert.

Another Voice Deepfake Fraud Scam

Time for another voice deepfake scam.

This one’s in Schwyz, in Switzerland, which makes reading of the original story somewhat difficult. But we can safely say that “Eine unbekannte Täterschaft hat zur Täuschung künstliche Intelligenz eingesetzt und so mehrere Millionen Franken erbeutet” is NOT a good thing.

And that’s millions of Swiss francs, not millions of Al Frankens.

Millions of Al Frankens.

Luckily, someone at Biometric Update speaks German well enough to get the gist of the story.

“Deploying audio manipulated to sound like a trusted business partner, fraudsters bamboozled an entrepreneur from the canton of Schwyz into transferring “several million Swiss francs” to a bank account in Asia.”

And what do the canton police recommend? (Google Translated)

“Be wary of payment requests via telephone or voice message, even if the voice sounds familiar.”

Singer/songwriters…and Deepfakes

I was just talking about singers, songwriters, and one singer who pretended to be a songwriter.

Of course, some musicians can be both.

Willie Nelson has written songs for others, sung songs written by others, and sung his own songs.

But despite the Grok deepfake I shared last October, Willie is not known as a rapper.

This is fake. Grok.

Oh Yeah, That Biometric Stuff

Bredemarket works with a number of technologies, but it’s no secret that my primary focus is biometrics. After all, I call myself the “biometric product marketing expert,” having worked with friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, and rapid DNA.

The biometric product marketing expert in the desert.

If I can help your biometric firm with your content, proposal, or analysis needs, schedule a free meeting with me to discuss how I can help.