The advancement opens the possibility of using smartphones—instead of body parts—as a form of identification to deter cybercrime."Like snowflakes, no two smartphones are the same. Each device, regardless of the manufacturer or make, can be identified through a pattern of microscopic imaging flaws that are present in every picture they take," says Kui Ren, the study's lead author. "It's kind of like matching bullets to a gun, only we're matching photos to a smartphone camera."
The new technology, to be presented in February at the 2018 Network and Distributed Systems Security Conference in California, is not yet available to the public. However, it could become part of the authentication process—like PIN numbers and passwords—that customers complete at cash registers, ATMs and during online transactions. more
