LAPTOP Face Recognition falls FLAT!!!!

1. Now this is one interesting thing to read.All those claims by Saif Ali Khan in his ad promoting one company for face recognition feature introduction had made its way out of the IT World.....well....so it seems!!!!read ON.........

2. Experts from Bkis Internet Security in Vietnam have proven how easy it is to defeat this.In front of technology experts, authors and press representatives from different countries participating in an internet security conference, Bkis experts demonstrated the vulnerabilities in Face recognition function on Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba laptops. Even when set at the highest security level, the laptop could not prevent Bkis expert Mr Nguyen Minh Duc from breaking into the system. With some technical tricks, Duc in turn logged onto Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba computer at the amazement and continuous applause from the audience. Everyone was really surprised to see how a famous and trusted security technique could be broken so easily.A Pic is shown below from actual demo loc.In some cases,even the owners of Facebook profile photo could be printed and used.

3. What the researchers found is that the technology just isn't that hard to fool. Even photographs that have previously been digitized and distributed, like those on Web pages or transmitted through videophone conversations, will do the job.The model exploits the flaw in image processing. In other words, it uses a photo of a person instead of his/her real face. It works because the algorithms will process in effect digital information.Provided those conditions, an attacker might take some photos of one user within the system, perform some image editing, regenerate “special pictures” and penetrate into the system.

4. Now the worry point is that Biometric data, including facial recognition, is increasingly being built into passports, drivers licenses and other forms of ID. Australia and Germany both use facial recognition to control access and determine identity at border crossings, and the U.S. and other countries are moving in that direction. So....ab kya hogaaaa?

5. Thanks http://www.examiner.com,http://www.bkis.com and Chip magazine.

Green Dam Youth Escort : What's that?

1. The title suggests that it has got something to do with college unions doing thier bit contribution in saving some water or fighting over some water dam issue.But its nothing like that.It is the name of a firewall which is a first of its kind official government imposed content-control software developed in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) , it is mandatory to have either the software, or its setup files accompanied on a compact disc or pre-installed on all new personal computers sold in mainland China, including those imported from abroad. 

2. The firewall software is to be made a mandatory pre-requisite for new computers sold in the country, as a meaure to help stamp out pornography and other vile elements on the Web. The move thus has been widely criticised by industry groups and officials as rash, politically intrusive, technically ineffective and commercially unfair.Few of the features of the software are enumerated below :

• Designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems,the software is specifically aimed at restricting online pornography but could be used for other purposes.
• Green Dam Youth Escort automatically downloads the latest updates of a list of prohibited sites from an online database, and also collects private user data. 
• Green Dam recognizes pornographic images by analyzing skin-coloured regions, complemented by human face recognition. The software is incapable of recognizing pictures of nudity featuring black- or red-skinned characters but sensitive enough to images with large patches of yellow that it censors promotional images of the film Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. 
• The software's misrecognition of "inappropriate contents" in applications including Microsoft Word can lead it to forcefully close those applications without notifying the user, and so cause data losses.
• The software runs only on Microsoft Windows x86, so Microsoft Windows x86-64, Mac and Linux users are ignored. Even on Microsoft Windows, the software is known to interfere with Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, and is incompatible with Mozilla Firefox.
• Some computers sold in China already come with parental-control software, but it isn't government-mandated.
  

3. The latest good news for the chinese people is that for the time being the compulory shipping and installation by the user has been put on hold.

4. Thanks http://www.circleid.com and off course wiki like always!!!!