Myth Confirmed

I had a sense of deja vu watching tonight’s episode of Mythbusters (Episode 59: Crimes and Myth-Demeanors 2) where they test the claims that various high tech security systems are intrusion proof – including fingerprint scanners! As I mentioned in my entry earlier this month, my Cyberattacks intersession course tried this same thing, though only with the small computer access scanner, not the major door access scanner Mythbusters featured. They, too, were able to beat the scanners, using more sophisticated techniques, but also being able to use a more plausible method of fingerprint capture. Whereas I like to think that my class and I were testing the myth that these things are vulnerable to spoofs using household materials.
The entire episode is actually worth catching in reruns (which the Discovery channel seem to run constantly) – they came up with some ludicrously simple methods for testing thermal and sonar sensors as well. It’s really fairly damning.