Technoglitch
Core Member
At the recent All Things Digital D11
conference, Motorola chief Dennis Woodside
talked about the upcoming ‘Moto X’ phone
and Regina Dugan, the former DARPA head,
discussed the future of authentication; it could
include wearable authentication in the form of
digital tattoos, or passwords that could be
managed via popping a daily authentication
vitamin.
The really fun and freaky D11 parts started
when Dugan, DARPA’s former head, started
talking about what Motorola's Advanced
Technology and Project group is working on
regarding unsolved problems such as
authentication. Bad passwords are a problem
of plague proportions as are equally poor and
quirky PIN trends. “Authentication is irritating.
In fact it’s so irritating only about half the
people do it,” she said, “despite the fact that
there’s a lot of information about you on your
smartphone, which makes you far more prone
to identity theft than if you didn’t otherwise
have it there.”
How many times a day do you enter a PIN to
check your smartphone? Dugan said, “The
average user does it 39 times a day and it
takes them 2.3 seconds every time they do it.
Power users would do it up to 100 times a
day.” She said we need options for doing
authentication better and mentioned near-
term solutions such as “tokens or fobs with
NFC or Bluetooth embedded in them.”
“But you could also think about a means of
authentication that you could simply wear on
your skin, every day for a week at a time, say
an electronic tattoo.”
She showed the D11 audience her tattoo
made by MC10. It has an antenna and
sensors embedded in it that would work to
authenticate Motorola smartphone users as
opposed to punching in a PIN number at least
39 times daily. MC10 claims that it “extends
human capabilities through virtually invisible
and conformal electronics.” Dugan said,
Motorola plans to work with MC10 to advance
such an authentication tattoo. She added that
some teenagers might not want to wear a
watch, but “they would wear a tattoo, if only
to piss off their parents.” These future
authentication tattoos would give people
colorful, cool design options.
Future authentication superpower: Pop a daily password pill or wear a digital tattoo? | Computerworld Blogs
conference, Motorola chief Dennis Woodside
talked about the upcoming ‘Moto X’ phone
and Regina Dugan, the former DARPA head,
discussed the future of authentication; it could
include wearable authentication in the form of
digital tattoos, or passwords that could be
managed via popping a daily authentication
vitamin.
The really fun and freaky D11 parts started
when Dugan, DARPA’s former head, started
talking about what Motorola's Advanced
Technology and Project group is working on
regarding unsolved problems such as
authentication. Bad passwords are a problem
of plague proportions as are equally poor and
quirky PIN trends. “Authentication is irritating.
In fact it’s so irritating only about half the
people do it,” she said, “despite the fact that
there’s a lot of information about you on your
smartphone, which makes you far more prone
to identity theft than if you didn’t otherwise
have it there.”
How many times a day do you enter a PIN to
check your smartphone? Dugan said, “The
average user does it 39 times a day and it
takes them 2.3 seconds every time they do it.
Power users would do it up to 100 times a
day.” She said we need options for doing
authentication better and mentioned near-
term solutions such as “tokens or fobs with
NFC or Bluetooth embedded in them.”
“But you could also think about a means of
authentication that you could simply wear on
your skin, every day for a week at a time, say
an electronic tattoo.”
She showed the D11 audience her tattoo
made by MC10. It has an antenna and
sensors embedded in it that would work to
authenticate Motorola smartphone users as
opposed to punching in a PIN number at least
39 times daily. MC10 claims that it “extends
human capabilities through virtually invisible
and conformal electronics.” Dugan said,
Motorola plans to work with MC10 to advance
such an authentication tattoo. She added that
some teenagers might not want to wear a
watch, but “they would wear a tattoo, if only
to piss off their parents.” These future
authentication tattoos would give people
colorful, cool design options.
Future authentication superpower: Pop a daily password pill or wear a digital tattoo? | Computerworld Blogs