Item — HN Reader

I wish for a future in which I can just sit down and my computer uses all sorts of heuristics to determine whether it's me or not, and authenticate.

* Checks my posture.

* Checks the sounds I make while sitting neutrally.

* Checks the positions of my hands.

* Checks my overall frame.

* Checks my eye and shape of face.

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Hopefully, all of these little things add up and in the end it can determine quite easily whether it's "me" or not.

I hate typing in passwords, it's a pain in the ass.

2 comments

That's ok until you fuck your back up one day or hurt yourself in some other way.

"What do you mean access denied - I've just got a back ache!"

I don't see way I can't update this hypothetical heuristic collection. :)

If you can update it, trivially, presumably without using the heuristics themselves, someone can update it for you. Now you have a new problem (securing the method for updating the heuristics.)

Although a counterpoint to this would be using more unique points of reference like the iris, fingerprints, etc, things not likely to change.

We can secure that using the current heuristics.

So the current heuristics are no longer valid (e.g. you were in a car wreck so you're hunched from back pain and have a black eye), and you're going to use the current heuristics as a gate to updating the heuristics?

Imagine if the "forgot password" link on a website gave you a form that said "enter your current password and then you can set a new password". This is the scenario you're describing.

Your solution to not being able to login is to login and change settings?

Think of it like Paxos. As long as a majority of unique data points agree, allow access. That way if your back is out which results in your posture being unrecognized, the other factors can still form a quorum and grant you access. There could be 20 such factors weighted by "difficulty to forge", so that a fingerprint counts 15x as much as posture for example. Then if you successfully authenticate with, say, 80% on all data points then the system can allow you to train a new factor.

Exactly! It becomes a machine learning problem. There was a post about this a while back ..

I was attempting to post some humor on HN, but it seems it's not quite welcome here. :)

Because you don't have permission as an unauthenticated user.

That and a code verification from your surgically-implanted-at-birth RFID. Call it N-factor authentication!