Hyderabad: Kaspersky Labs, a major cybersecurity and anti-virus service provider, has come up with a solution to control the theft of biometric information. In September 2016, experts from Kaspersky identified the possibility of identity theft being committed through the use of biometric skimmers. They were also able to ascertain that the technology had been in use by cybercriminals since 2015. “While many financial organisations consider biometric-based solutions to be some of the most promising additions to current authentication methods, cybercriminals see biometrics as a new opportunity to steal sensitive information,” they said in a report. Their report also mentioned that 12 companies across the globe were producing skimmers capable of stealing biometric data.
“At least three underground sellers are already researching devices that could illegally obtain data from palm vein and iris recognition systems. The first wave of biometric-skimmers was observed to be in presale testing in September 2015. Evidence reveals that during initial testing, developers discovered several bugs. The main problem was the use of GSM modules for biometric data transfer – they were too slow in transferring the large volume of data obtained. As a result, new versions of skimmers use different, faster data-transfer technologies,” it said.
