Social Engineering Blogs

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How would you feel if every time you logged onto your personal accounts from your laptop or phone you were giving away valuable personal information you hold dear?

Scientists at Cambridge University have shown that a person’s facial expressions could give away their security codes via the webcam on their device.

The Inquirer.net noted that with so many people using smart devices that have built in webcams – ipads,  ipad minis, iPhones, Androids, Kindles – their personal storage unit security concerns for passwords and bank accounts are at an all time high.

Using an app called “PIN Skimmer”, the research team was able to listen to the sound of taps in relative proximity to a device microphone, and study facial expressions using the webcam’s front facing camera to deduce the unlock codes or patterns of several Android devices with alarming accuracy.

This technology is still in the development stage but if the past growth of technology is any indication this concern can turn into a huge problem within a year or two.

The findings are astonishing:  for a four digit PIN, the app was able to detect with 50% accuracy within five attempts and for an eight digit PIN, a 60% success rate was achieved within 10 attempts.

These preliminary tests was were conducted on a Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy S3, are now expected to be widened to other devices.

Do think you’re being watched or will be in the near future?

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Primates have been relying on facial expressions to delineate friends from predators for thousands of years and new research purports that increasing group size puts more pressure on the evolution of coloration across different sub-regions of primates’ faces.

International Business Times reports on these new findings from biologists from the University of California Los Angeles.

“Social pressures have guided the evolution of the enormous diversity of faces we see across the group [Old World African and Asian primates species] ,“ Michael Alfaro, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and senior author of the study commented.  Unlike solitary species like orangutans, Old World species can live in groups of up to 800 members.  Larger groups let member species develop “more communication avenues” and “a greater repertoire of facial vocabulary.”

The scientists divided photos of primate faces into several regions, and classified each face’s color, hair and skin. Each face was assigned a score based on the total number of different colors on its facial regions. The biologists then determined how the complexity scores were related to social variables including environmental factors like geographic location, canopy density, rainfall and temperature.

“We found that for African primates, faces tend to be light or dark depending on how open or closed the habitat is and on how much light the habitat receives,“ Alfaro said. “We also found that no matter where you live, if your species has a large social group, then your face tends to be more complex.”

The team discovered that primates’ facial complexity is determined by the size of its social group and within the Old World group, they found that different primate groups used their faces differently.  For instance, great apes had plainer faces than monkeys. One reason behind this could be attributed to facial expressions.

The biologists hope that these findings might shed some light on the evolution of human faces as well.

What are your thoughts on the Evolution of Primate Facial Expressions?