It’s high time to drop authentication systems like fingerprint authentication, retinal scanning, and even the all new Apple’s iPhone X face recognition. All these biometrics are too mundane. Let’s take a moment and think about using your heart as your password.
Yes! You heard that right. An cardiac-scan authentication system, developed by a group of computer scientists at the University of Buffalo, New York, that uses your heart's shape and size as a unique biometric to identify and authenticate. The authentication system makes use of the low-level Doppler radar to wirelessly and continuously map out the dimensions of the beating heart, granting access to the device as long as the user is near it.
The main point of interest is that, will it be possible to dupe this new cardiac scan authentication system as hackers have already tricked Samsung's Galaxy S8 iris-recognition system with a dummy eye and were also able to recreate fingerprints using high-resolution photos to beat Apple's Touch ID in the iPhone 5s. However, Apple’s new face recognition system is yet to be seen whether anyone can dupe it.
According to the researchers, no two people with identical hearts have ever been found. And people's hearts do not change shape unless they suffer from serious heart disease. The heart's shape and cardiac motions are unique and only present in a person who is alive and it is nearly impossible to spoof.
Talking about the health effect of the heart scans, the team of the researchers said that the strength of the signal is much lesser than that of Wifi, and other authentication system which emits harmful Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) radiation. So, it doesn’t pose any health issues.
As of now, it is not practical to use because of its size, they are hoping to shrink it to a point where a system can be installed into the corners of computer keyboards and smartphones.