Sony unveils vein-identification for security screening

February 2, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

Biometric identification technology is taking a step toward the weird: Sony has unveiled a way to authenticate your identity based on the patterns of your veins.

The technology, dubbed Mofiria, could show up on mobile phones within a year. It uses a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor to capture light scattered inside the veins of your finger. The data can be compressed and stored in gadgets with authentication built into them. That makes it much easier to store and retrieve on a mobile device.

So, instead of swiping your finger across a reader on your laptop, you can have the reader scan your veins. Sony claims this is a lot more accurate and faster than fingerprint or retinal scans. The authentication can happen a lot faster than you can type in a password as well.

Sony says it takes 0.015 seconds to identify someone using a typical computer and about a quarter of a second with a mobile phone. It is accurate about 999 times of out 1,000. Rivals such as Hitachi and Fujitsu have been working on similar technology. You can imagine it being used on steering wheels to identify drivers, or with ATM machines.

This is pretty clever. It reminds me of the Admit One system for identifying people by recognizing the patterns of their keystrokes.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Erdwing
    This is a poorly written ans misleading article. Was it meant to garner attention? I expect better from VB.
  • Erdwing
    The comment above was meant for the IE article.
  • And we expect better from our commenters -- care to add some substance to your trollish statement (preferably on the correct article)?
  • scottmunc
    What if you have your varicose veins removed, will it still work? Damn vanity...
  • Haggie
    I've got a vein for you to identify, IN MY PANTS!!!
  • Great to see that these 2nd generation biometric technologies are getting productized and commercialized, instead of focussing on "good old" fingerprints all the time. I wonder when we see the technological breakthrough in similar 2nd gen biometrics, such as odor and gait analysis. The "Global Security Challenge's" finalist in 2006, was a British entrepreneur who claimed to have developed a gait biometric that identifies people by the way they walk.