IARPA wants to know when someone tries to trick biometric scanners

SRI has been awarded a $12.5 million Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity contract for biometric research.

Under the four-year contract for IARPA's Odin Program, SRI will develop "dynamic biometrics" that can detect attempts to evade or deceive biometric systems such as fingerprint, iris and face scanners, according to an SRI news release. 

The inability of current biometric sensors to detect these "presentation attacks" limit these sensors to "relatively low risk applications such as unlocking one's phone, or applications in which a human guard is present to spot and stop overtly suspicious activity," SRI said.

Hence, SRI will design a prototype system, called the Multi-physiological Joint Optimization and Liveness Nuances for Identity Ratification system, to stop presentation attacks.

"By analyzing such factors as changes in heart rate, perspiration and blood flow both within tissues being used for biometric identification and across other body regions, the system will reliably detect whether these biometric tissues are real or being faked," the company said.

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