On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 01:38:47AM -0500, Matthew S. Hallacy wrote: > as for post-it notes, there are much better ways to authenticate > someone, my girlfriends father has to use a usb keyfob device to > activate his workstation, you can also use devices such as retina > scanners, fingerprint scanners, and (much more cheaply) voice print > identification. http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9808.html#biometrics Bruce Schneier has some strong opinions on biometrics (among others - what happens when someone steals your thumbprint? It's really hard to get issued a new one... - and don't tell me they can't. A cryptographer in Japan - Tsutomu Matsumoto - and his students defeated eleven commercially available fingerprint scanners 80% of the time using about $10 worth of household supplies - something equivalent to gummi worms is one of the major components. See http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0205.html#5) The USB keyfob is good - Bruce's opinion is that the best security is a combination of something you have plus something you know. I.e., a security card plus a password is good. For purposes of security, you want the identifiers to be something you can cancel and reissue. -- Scott Raun sraun at fireopal.org