Default Password and Fallback Password

It appears that quite a few biometrics people confidently allege that they do not rely on a fallback password or any backup measure.

In most cases, judging from my experience of dealing with biometrics people for nearly 20 years, those people are simply indifferent to the fact that the default password, which was quietly embedded in their authentication systems from the beginning, functions as a fallback password when the user gets rejected by the biometrics.

Here, indifference and ignorance might be one of their most powerful weapons for their active sales operations.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/early-models-smartphones-were-safer-than-newer-how-come-kokumai

Comments

Probabilistic Is Human Body, Not Pattern-Matching Algorithm

The probabilistic nature of biometrics comes from the unpredictably variable body features of living animals rather than imperfect algorithms of pattern matching; perfection of pattern matching algorithm would not affect the probabilistic nature of biometrics. Biometrics that measures the probabilistic body features does not escape False Rejection/False Non-Match/False Negative that inevitably comes with False Acceptance/False Match/False Positive. Since it cannot escape FR/FNM/FN, biometrics cannot escape the dependence on a fallback measure, a default password/pincode in most cases, which brings the security to the level lower than a password/pincode-only authentication. And yet, so many people who need higher security are spending so much money for bringing security down. Click the link for more - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/negative-security-effect-biometrics-deployed-hitoshi-kokumai/

‘Authenticators’ and ‘Deployment of Authenticators’

There are not a few security professionals who wrongly mix up the layer of ‘authenticators’ with that of ‘deployment of authenticators’, talking as though the former and the latter were competing each other, for example, ‘Multi-Factor Authentication is better than a password’ and ‘ID federation is better than a password’. The password is an ‘authenticator’. So are the token and biometrics. Whereas MFA and ID federation like FIDO and Open ID are ‘deployment of the authenticators’ Expanded Password System is to be found on the layer of 'authenticator', while the likes of Open ID and FIDO are all to be found on the upper layer of 'deployment of authenticators' and, as such, the likes of Open ID and FIDO could naturally be our down-stream partners. There are also some people who wrongly allege that removing an authenticator should increase security. They are plainly misguided as examined here – “Removal of Passwords and Its Security Effect” https://www.linke...

Expanded Password System to Complement FIDO2

2 is larger than 1 but is not necessarily stronger than 1, as two children could be overwhelmed by a grown-up. For a two-factor authentication to be really reliable, each factor should be reasonably secure and usable enough. On the other hand, ‘password-less’ authentication, however attractive it might sound, would only benefit bad guys as examined in the link page - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/removal-passwords-its-security-effect-hitoshi-kokumai/ People who offer a token as 'a factor' of two factor authentication schemes could all be viewed as our potential down-stream partners. Among them are the people who offer FIDO2-compatible solutions. Put together, we could come up with the two-factor authentications that are much more reliable than otherwise.

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