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Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

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41–50 of 172 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#41

Hi! I'm on the train with bad internet right now and so can't go looking but have you considered face recognition software using the laptops camera? There must be an app that takes a look at the webcam when a password challenge is presented. Anyone know of anything? Edit: Found one! https://www.keylemon.com/download-other-versions/

Are their any technologies out there that can sense your body heat as well as facial recognition? I don't know if there are any commercially available applications of this but here's an interesting delve into evolving facial recognition into thermal recognition: http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/17173/InTech-Thermal_infrared...

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#42
post #15

Yubikey would work if you could mount it so that you can touch the touch-pad with your nose. I don't know if that's acceptable to you?

Hi, that would be acceptable just not physically doable I'm afraid. My range of movement would prohibit this unfortunately.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read a lot of them can be spoofed with either a printed picture, or a video playing back.

So I guess the next step in the arms-race would be twin cameras (kinect?) to build a 3D image of a face. Then the bad guys would make a sculpture. Then the good guys could add some kind of mannerism detection (smile?, wink?). Then the bad guys would work on latex masks. ....I quite want to see how this evolves tbh.

It's only going to evolve so far for consumer application. At some point, the barrier to cracking becomes too high for normal efforts. Who's going to spend 4-6 hours applying makeup to their face to crack your laptop's security (since the crack only applies to one instance) if you're only protecting your weird porn and some household financial data. You likely wouldn't hear about any efforts beyond that, since it would be spycraft.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#44
post #13

You can set LastPass to prompt for the password every time you need to login to a password[1]. This presumably disables password caching in the plugin. Would that solve the your first problem? [1] https://helpdesk.lastpass.com/account-settings/security/

Yes, that's what I'm doing at the moment but I'm unlocking the passwords on a session by session basis rather than one password at a time.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#47

Forgive the off the cuff suggestion here, it's the quickest and simplest thing I can think of though not an optimum way to use your laptop and you're probably hoping for a more elegant solution. What if you install virtual box w/ some free OS (like ubuntu). Store all your personal information within the virtual machine which is configured with a secure login. Then you can leave the laptop unsecured so you can use you…

That's just punting. How does he login to the secure VM?

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#48
When I messed with army radios - these being the made-by-the-lowest-bidder-and-not-secret analogue variety - they were throat-operated. You spoke silently, and the microphone - pressed to your throat - sent speech over the radio.

It took practice to talk perfectly clearly, but it could be mastered.

Google "throat microphone".

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#49

Forgive the off the cuff suggestion here, it's the quickest and simplest thing I can think of though not an optimum way to use your laptop and you're probably hoping for a more elegant solution. What if you install virtual box w/ some free OS (like ubuntu). Store all your personal information within the virtual machine which is configured with a secure login. Then you can leave the laptop unsecured so you can use you…

You know, I hadn't actually considered that! That certainly could solve quite a lot of the security problems, but as you say it adds a layer of complexity to an already complex method of using my computer. Excellent idea though :-)

Re: Ask HN: I'm quadriplegic – can you help me with my security?

#50
post #47

Forgive the off the cuff suggestion here, it's the quickest and simplest thing I can think of though not an optimum way to use your laptop and you're probably hoping for a more elegant solution. What if you install virtual box w/ some free OS (like ubuntu). Store all your personal information within the virtual machine which is configured with a secure login. Then you can leave the laptop unsecured so you can use you…

That's just punting. How does he login to the secure VM?

If I had to guess, he would "use [his] other apps to dictate the password to the ubuntu OS for login".
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