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Since you need to wear a mask to go out, do you also feel that the original face recognition on your mobile phone is not easy to use?

In the past ten years of technological development, we have experienced the continuous updating of mobile phone unlocking methods. From passwords to graphics, then to fingerprint unlocking and face recognition. However, since wearing masks, everyone seems to have returned to the most traditional password unlocking.

▲ After wearing the mask, the original face recognition is not easy to use.| Pixabay

Is there a convenient and safe way to unlock your phone? Scientists tell you, there are, but it all looks... a little crazy.

Recently, researchers at Kyushu University and Tokyo University in Japan have provided a new way to unlock mobile phones by blowing.

Perhaps many people are familiar with "electronic nose," using olfactory sensor system, electronic nose can analyze all kinds of smells in the air, and accurately identify the components of smell. In some food industries, electronic noses can be used to detect which foods are used and whether the taste is qualified.

However, even if you can smell it, how can the phone recognize it as "me"? After all, whether it was a fingerprint or a face, it looked unique. But is our tone also unique?

The breath we exhale is complex, and if we eat something, it changes. But even so, each of us carries some unique chemicals in our breath. Research suggests that the air we breathe may be used to identify diseases such as diabetes.

So in this study, 28 compounds were identified as tools for "breath recognition." They used a 16-channel odor sensor, each capable of identifying several odors, to analyze the chemicals in each person's breath through machine learning.

It turns out that this sensor does have some effect. A total of 20 different places and different ages of people blowing recognition, the accuracy of the results reached 97.8%.

However, none of these people had eaten for six hours before the test. A sample size of 20 people is also too small, and although odor recognition is possible, the technology is still immature. Perhaps after we finish eating such heavy-tasting food as snail powder, we will find that we can't "blow" our mobile phones.

▲ Can the mobile phone still recognize it after eating heavy food?| Pixabay

Blow to unlock the phone is not the most outrageous. There are many other wacky ways to prove "we are unique" in biometric authentication. In addition to the common fingerprint, iris, DNA recognition, you can also use the following methods to unlock:

Such as lifting your hand, or showing the phone the shape of your ear canal, or through the veins of your fingers, walking posture, or even typing frequency...

The unique shape of the hand can also be used for biometric identification.| Pixabay

Each of us has a unique set of biological characteristics. For example, the shape of your hand, the phone can enter the length and width of your fingers, the distance between joints and other information to identify whether it is you. And when we make various expressions, the shape of the ear canal changes accordingly. Scientists put people on special "headphones" that can recognize people by changes in their ear canals as long as you change your expression to the screen.

However, were these methods really reliable? No matter what kind of biometric identification means, it is identified by physical methods, and it is inevitable that there will be defects. Odor recognition can be affected by food or disease, and the shape of the hand and ear canal can be injured. Sometimes we just put on glasses, and face recognition suddenly "doesn't recognize" us.

Even the fingerprint identification we used was gradually eliminated because of great security risks.

As early as 2017, some researchers realized a "universal fingerprint" that could unlock any mobile phone. Although each of us has a unique fingerprint, no matter how "smart" we are, the fingerprint reader on our mobile phone is still flawed. Because the keys to unlock fingerprints on mobile phones are generally very small, and they can store several people's fingers.

Only by learning a large number of fingerprints and matching them,"universal fingerprints" can be generated, and the cracking success rate can even reach 76%. If you save several fingers at once, the chances of a match are even greater.

▲ Real fingerprints (left) and "universal fingerprints"(right).| References [3]

Not to mention the not-so-smart fingerprint readers, paper or orange peel can sometimes unlock mobile phones.

And leaving your fingerprints in public places actually leaves a safety hazard. Some researchers can unlock mobile phones and other security systems by collecting residual fingerprints and carving a "fake fingerprint" in 3D.

The fingerprint reader of the mobile phone is very small.| Pixabay

In short, protecting personal information security is very important. Once the phone is cracked, personal privacy will also lose protection. Even as scientists struggle to find more secure "passwords" through fancy unlocking methods, we need to protect ourselves with more security measures.

Not to mention face recognition in masks.

References:

[1] Jirayupat, Chaiyanut, et al. "Breath odor-based individual authentication by an artificial olfactorysensor system and machine learning. "Chemical Communications (2022).

[2] https://scienceblog.com/531548/forget-finger-scans-breath-may-be-your-best-id/

[3] Bontrager, Philip, et al. "Deepmasterprints: Generating masterprints for dictionary attacks vialatent variable evolution. "2018 IEEE 9th International Conference onBiometrics Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS). IEEE, 2018.

[4] Amesaka, Takashi, Hiroki Watanabe, andMasanori Sugimoto. "Facial expression recognition using ear canal transferfunction. "Proceedings of the 23rd International Symposium onWearable Computers. 2019.

[5] Kumar, Ajay, and Yingbo Zhou. "Human identification using finger images. "IEEE Transactions onimage processing 21.4 (2011): 2228-2244.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Bringing Science Home (ID: steamforkids), by Skin

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