Fujitsu Iris-Scanning Smartphones Go On Sale

The Guardian: Fujitsu Arrows NX F-04G smartphone sold by Japan’s NTT Docomo, uses an infrared LED and a special camera to identify a user by snapping a picture of the iris of his eye. The camera was first presented and awarded at MWC 2015. Most implementations of iris-recognition systems are said to work at a distances of 10cm, while Fujitsu’s system can operate at a standard smartphone operating distance. FujitsuMobile shows how it works:



WSJ reports that ZTE too presented eye recognition feature in its new Grand S3 phone at MWC 2015, although it uses a different approach licensed from EyeVerify. It works by imaging the unique vein patterns in the whites of the eye using the Grand S3’s front facing camera:



GizmoChina: ViewSonic too announced its plans on iris recognition in smartphone, but it's not clear if it has reached the market yet.

Meanwhile, Forbes discusses the hacks to fool the iris recognition cameras:

“We have managed to fool a commercial system with a print out down to an iris diameter of 75 pixels,” says security researcher Jan “Starbug” Krissler. “I did tests with different people and can say that an iris image with a diameter down to 75 pixel worked on our tests.” The print out had to have a resolution of 1200 dpi too, though it’s easy to find printers able to hit that specification today, and ideally at least 75 per cent of the iris was visible.

Unlike the fingerprint attack, where it was necessary to create a proper clone, all that he needed in his iris recognition hacks was the print out, the researcher claims. “It’s nothing more. I punched a hole in the middle, but only for orientation. It’s not needed,” Starbug added.