Frontier

A password-free era is coming

Written by Foreign Correspondent Qing LI

How many passcodes do we have to remember when we check e-mail， shop on different websites， transfer money online or get access to various types of information and services on the computer？ It would be modest to say hundreds of for a netizen who grow up with the Internet. We have to bring the appropriate "key"--the correct password if we go to locked sites on the internet. What if I forget？What if the passcode is stolen？ Or what if one is required to change the password from time to time？ In short， the burden of remembering passwords is getting heavier. And this is a problem that many security experts are trying to solve.

There are a lot of password management tools in the market， usually with a random generation of long and complex password strings at the beginning， and then the files of password string are stored in encrypted way， to get access to these encrypted files， you will need a chief password. So， as long as you remember this chief password， you can unlock other passwords. However， once it is attacked by the hacker， you will have to reset the passwords for each site， and verify them by emails one by one， which will cause a lot of time and effort！

In addition， there are a number of personalized unlock methods， for example， the Android smartphone can be unlocked by swiping the screen. More and more security experts are focusing on biometrics， such as fingerprint recognition， facial recognition， iris recognition， and so on. The iphone adopts fingerprint recognition， but some people have unlocked their phones with fake fingerprints. This shows that fingerprint identification technology is not completely reliable. The same problems are found with facial recognition and iris recognition.

What about brain waves？ Researchers at the Binghamton University in the United States released a study titled “Brainprinting" in the journal Neurocomputing. They observed 45 volunteers who read the acronyms and found that each volunteer's brain reacted differently to different acronyms， and the individual differences reached 94%. This indicates that the computer system is sufficient to identify the individual. In other words， through a little "learning"， the computer can decide whether the person sitting in front of it is the owner based on his or her brain response to the corresponding words. This means that you can unlock the computer by simply listening to a few words without a password. "Brainprinting" is different from fingerprints， once the fingerprint is stolen， the loss will not be recovered， but the "brainprinting can be reset. Although this research is far from practical use， we believe that the era of password-free will eventually come！endprint