Two weeks ago, I wrote about a technology increasingly touted by some technology companies – facial recognition as a means of authenticating users in lieu of passwords. Apparently, facial recognition have another function. Remember the movie the Minority Report starring Tom Cruise, in which in the future, there are facial recognition everywhere ( based on your iris) to catch wanted people. If you remember the plot, Tom Cruise had to have his eyes removed, and replaced with somebody else’s so that he won’t be recognized.
Apparently, that technology is not that far off. A company called LogicaCMG has said that their facial recognition cameras recognized an average of 85 percent success rate in an international airport in singling out people in matching them against a database of 1,000 wanted people. This is a little bit difficult, because the software attempts to recognize people in various angles in a live video feed.
But nevertheless, this technology when perfected, has immense repercussions both for security, and as a potential invasion on privacy for all of us. If you travel , you will note that now whenever you pass the US immigrations, you have to have your face photographed, and your fingerprints scanned. Apparently, these are ways they are authenticating your identity.
On another event, I was informed by a person that he thinks there is really no need for him to invest in anti-virus software as well known attacks now are on a decline. I beg to disagree. More and more viruses are being created, and the latest reports I see still say that there are thousands of new ones every month, but its nature has changed, which may prompt some people to think that there is no more threat.
A few years ago, malware, and virus creators were focused on getting attention. They created viruses which when triggered, will announce itself. The nature of the virus was just for ego purposes. So the virus will find ways to attack, and when inside, will say, ” ha! Got you!”, or something to that effect. So everywhere, millions of sites get hit, and it is reported in the news widely.
Todays’ virus creators are being done for selfish purposes, or for getting private information from you like passwords, or using your computer as a staging post silently to attack other computer networks. They want to penetrate your system for financial gain, not for ego. So you will not know the virus is already lurking in your computer, because its very nature is to be secretive – if possible, they would want to stay in your computer undetected for as long as possible, slowly trying to see what they can do.
Moreover, while malware writers before target to get as many as possible, nowadays, people are more focused on their attacks. Before the attack, they try to gather information about their target so that they can find the appropriate recipients in which they will want to use the computers for. For instance, they may target a particular web browser or operating system with the end function of trying to see how they can take advantage of the users for their own gain.
In today’s environment, when you not only have more to lose than your files due to the prank, you should be keenly aware of what malware can do. Especially if you use your computers to log into websites where you do financial transactions, it pays always to insure that you have some amount of defense to insure that there is no virus or Trojan lurking in your computer ready to transmit your confidential information to somebody in waiting.
Wilson Ng keeps a log of his articles in www.ngkhai.net/bizdrivenlife