Dew Engineering and Development Limited

Activcard Ireland Limited

Other

Bluink Ltd.

Stephen J Borza

Laurence Hamid

Gordon S Freedman

Neil Teitelbaum

Michael Andrew Borza

Gordon Freedman

Christopher S Dunn

Gordon Sean Freedman

Biometrics are increasingly used to provide authentication and/or verification of a user in many security and financial applications for example. However, 'spoof attacks' through presentation of biometric artefacts that are “false” allow attackers to fool these biometric verification systems. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to further differentiate the acquired biometric characteristics into feature spaces relating to live and non-living biometrics to prevent non-living biometric credentials triggering biometric verification. The inventors have established a variety of “liveness” detection methodologies which can block either low complexity spoofs or more advanced spoofs. Such techniques may provide for monitoring of responses to challenges discretely or in combination with additional aspects such as the timing of user's responses, depth detection within acquired images, comparison of other images from other cameras with database data etc.

Liveness detection

Biometrics are increasingly used to provide authentication and/or verification of a user in many security and financial applications for example. However, 'spoof attacks' through presentation of biometric artefacts that are 'false' allow attackers to fool these biometric verification systems. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to further differentiate the acquired biometric characteristics into feature spaces relating to live and non-living biometrics to prevent non-living biometric credentials triggering biometric verification. The inventors have established a variety of &#x201c;liveness&#x201d; detection methodologies which can block either low complexity spoofs or more advanced spoofs. Such techniques may provide for monitoring of responses to challenges discretely or in combination with additional aspects such as the timing of user's responses, depth detection within acquired images, comparison of other images from other cameras with database data etc.

Whilst portable electronic devices such as smartphones have become ubiquitous for billions of users their primarily uses are consuming content or generating limited low complexity data. In contrast, laptops, desktop PCs etc. allow users to enter extended and/or complex content due to ergonomic user interfaces such as keyboard and mouse. Moving data requires either a third electronic device, e.g. a USB memory drive, or remotely storing the content. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide users with the benefit of entering and generating content on one or more electronic systems supporting ergonomic and user compatible haptic interfaces with the ability to store this upon their PED, e.g. smartphone. It would be further beneficial to provide the user also with a means to enter information into applications upon their PED through such external interfaces rather than the haptic interface of their PED, e.g. typically a small touchscreen.

Portable device interface methods and systems

In order to capture electronic information provided by a user to another user different third parties seek to download tracking software, viruses etc. to the user's computer systems. These may include, but are not limited to, message intercepting, email logging, hacking, spamming, phishing, spyware, malware, keyloggers, screen capturing, Trojan horses, WWW robots (BOTs or bots), IP spoofing, man-in-the-middle attacks, worms and viruses. Whilst within the prior art methodologies exist to protect the message by converting the plaintext at the sender's terminal to ciphertext for transmission before it is re-converted to plaintext at the receiver's (or recipient's) terminal once decrypted the message content, now in plaintext is accessible to malware, Trojan horse software, etc. upon the recipient's terminal allowing its contents to be acquired and transmitted without the recipient's and/or sender's knowledge. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide users with methods and systems enabling secure messaging to be undertaken as well as secure document transmission and viewing that overcomes the limitations within the prior art. Accordingly, beneficially embodiments of the invention provide secure messaging and secure document transmission even upon potentially compromised desktop computers.

Secure content and encryption methods and techniques

While portable electronic devices such as smartphones have become ubiquitous for billions of users their primarily uses are consuming content or generating limited low complexity data. In contrast, laptops, desktop PCs etc. allow users to enter extended and/or complex content due to ergonomic user interfaces such as keyboard and mouse. Moving data requires either a third electronic device, e.g. a USB memory drive, or remotely storing the content. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide users with the benefit of entering and generating content on one or more electronic systems supporting ergonomic and user compatible haptic interfaces with the ability to store this upon their PED, e.g. smartphone. It would be further beneficial to provide the user also with a means to enter information into applications upon their PED through such external interfaces rather than the haptic interface of their PED, e.g. typically a small touchscreen.

A method and a system for disabling execution of a software application stored within a computer absent data indicative of an authorized use of the software application are disclosed. At start up or during execution of a software application a user is prompted for user authorization information. Using a processor within a smart card the received user authorization information is compared with user authorization information stored in memory of the smart card to produce a comparison result. If the comparison result is indicative of an authorized user of the software application, then data indicative of the authorized use of the software application is provided from the smart card to the computer. Upon receipt of the data indicative of the authorized use of the software application execution of the software application is continued. When the data is not data indicative of the authorized use of the software application further execution of the software application is disabled. For example, biometric information in the form of a fingerprint may be used for user authorization.

Method of distributing piracy protected computer software

A method and system for generating random numbers is disclosed wherein an array of imaging sensors while not in normal use, captures ambient light and back scattered light. These light sources vary naturally over a range of intensities. Intensity values above and below a threshold value are decoded as &ldquo;1&rdquo; and &ldquo;0&rdquo; bits, respectively. The resulting values, based on noise within the array signal, are single bit values or n bit values. A preferred imaging sensor array is a charge coupled device. Other imaging sensor arrays such as capacitive fingerprint imagers may also be used for this purpose when sufficient noise exists within the imaging sensor array signal.

Random number generator and method for same

An optical imaging device such as a fingerprint imager is disclosed that has an array of micromirrors that allows sequential scanning of areas of a platen in steps. The scanned areas of the platen are transmitted to an image sensor and a composite image constructed from the scanned areas. By transmitting scanned areas of the platen in sections, the image sensor area required is reduced in contrast to prior art optical images that scan the whole platen in a single step.

Micromirror optical imager

A method of enhancing network security is provided for a communication session initiated between a first computer and a second other computer. From the first computer to the second computer in communications therewith a process for securing communications therebetween is transmitted. One such process is a biometric characterisation process for characterising fingerprints. The process is for execution on the second computer and is selected to be compatible therewith. Communications from the second computer to the first computer are secured using the transmitted process on the second computer and using, on the first computer, a compatible process to the transmitted process. The host computer can modify or replace the process or data particular to the process before each session, during a session, or at intervals.

Method for securing communication by selecting an encoding process using a first computer based upon ability of a second computer and deleting the process thereafter

An optical imaging device such as a fingerprint imager has a prism or another light transmitting element, a light source for illuminating a finger placed on the prism, and a CCD image sensor for receiving a light beam reflected from the finger-contacted surface. A modified optical lens is used to focus and redirect the reflected light beam. The lens has a relatively small reflective coating in the middle of its back surface, the reflective coating constituting an optical iris. The modified lens is effective to partly correct for peripheral aberration, perspective distortion and depth-of-field image distortion of the device and gives rise to a compact design of the device.

Imaging device, especially for optical fingerprinting

A fingerprint sensing device and recognition system includes a capacitive array of sense elements in conjunction with a means of determining motion of a surface being imaged. A plurality of images is combined to form a composite image having an area that is greater than the area of a single captured image. The sensing device is disposed between protective surfaces and supported by a flexible structure.

Contact imaging device

A method of registering biometric data is disclosed wherein a number of instances of input biometric data are accepted from a new user during a registration process. Each of these data samples are compared against existing templates to identify those templates posing a significant risk of confusion with a data sample. Those templates are identified and information relating to those templates is stored with the enrolled template of the new user. When a user is identified as the new user, the system automatically verifies that the data sample does not also result in identification as one of the identified templates.

Biometric security encryption system

A method and system of generating random numbers using imaging transducers of a charge coupled array. Noise signals detected by a first and a second imaging transducers of the array are processed together to yield a first value; noise signals detected by a third and a fourth imaging transducers are processed together to yield a second value; the first and second values are processed together to yield the random number.

Growing community of inventors

Ottawa, Canada

Stephen J Borza