ImperialViolet

So IBM now have a laptop ... (05 Oct 2004)

So IBM now have a laptop with a fingerprint scanner built in. So, what is this meant to protect beyond passwords? Let's consider the attack cases:

  1. Someone steals the laptop because you left it somewhere stupid like the pub (let's call this the MI5 case)
  2. Someone is playing with the laptop while you're away for a moment
  3. Someone targets the laptop because because they want the data on it

And a few facts from the piece:

  • You can setup the scan at boot time and that's enough to login and load the encryption key
  • It suggests that the scanner itself stores the fingerprint hashes

Also remember that fingerprints are only secure if you trust the reader and nearly all readers suck. It's very difficult for a fingerprint scanner to tell the difference between a real finger and something which looks just like it, but isn't attached to a person.

In case 1 the attacker knows nothing about you. If you care enough about your data to `encrypt' the hard drive (because, if you don't, they can lift the contents of the disk anyway) they are probably stuffed. A reasonable passphrase is probably enough to stop them as they are mostly after the hardware itself to sell on.

Now, if it has a fingerprint scanner the laptop is probably less secure because the owner's fingerprints are going to be on the laptop or something in the same case. The effort required to break a passphrase is measurable. The effort required with a fingerprint is constant and small if you have the fingerprint in question.

In the second case (assuming that you didn't leave it logged in), there's little chance that someone is going to brute force a passphrase manually. But they could lift a fingerprint and come back next day with a fake made up. Again, you're probably better off with a passphrase.

In the third case you're certainly better off with a passphrase. Since the encryption keys are stored in the hardware in the case of fingerprint security (and laptop hardware isn't very tamper resistant) a break is probably easy for a well equipped group. In the case of a passphrase they either brute force it, or have to install a logger, get it back to you and steal it again. Not impossible, but harder.

So the fingerprint scanner may be neat - but I wouldn't use it on its own.