Passwords linger like landlines

They’re easily hacked and tech companies want to kill them, yet passwords are just as pervasive as ever, writes

In April, three developers from a Montreal AI startup released demos of their speech synthesis tool, Lyrebird, which they said could ‘‘copy the voice of anyone’’ with just a 60-second recording.

One of Lyrebird’s founders, Alexandre de Brebisson, who is studying AI at the University of Montreal, said his team’s motivation was to simply improve speech synthesis.

Could his software be used to fool voice-based authentication? ‘‘We haven’t tested our tech on those systems,’’ he said, ‘‘but we would not be surprised.’’

Rise of face recognition

Similar concerns have been raised about face-recognition.

Microsoft says its Hello technology – now available in a range of Windows-based computers and soon to be tested at Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland – uses infra-red sensors to build a reliable representation of a human face. The company says the technology can’t be fooled by a photograph held to the lens.

But in March, reports surfaced that the facial-recognition feature of Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 smartphone could be tricked exactly that way.

In a statement, Samsung said facial recognition can only be used to open the Galaxy S8 and not to ‘‘authenticate access to Samsung Pay or Secure Folder’’.

Thirteen years ago, Bill Gates predicted the death of the password. It never happened because people cling to old habits and can’t always afford the latest technology.

So though cheaper biometric sensors and smarter software have helped improve online security, Menting believes passwords may be around for another 50 years – kind of like landlines.

‘‘Until we have embedded devices in ourselves that can act as that password,’’ she says, ‘‘I don’t see them losing the authentication war any time soon.’’ Hackers are counting on it. – Bloomberg