A Raytheon engineer has developed a computer mouse that will only operate with biometric authentication, according to a Digital Trends article by Jason Hahn.
The engineer, Glenn Kaufman, was inspired by the smart gun concept, a new firearm design that requires user authentication – whether via RFID, fingerprint-scanning, or some other mechanism – before a gun can be fired. Interestingly, Kaufman’s mouse design relies on pressure metrics: Each user’s grip on a mouse is unique and can be measured based on the pressure exerted by the hand, and by the positioning of the hand on the mouse. The system is apparently able to successfully authenticate users in this way with a remarkable accuracy rate of 99.999 percent. And because it’s not possible to ‘steal’ someone’s mouse grip, it’s a particularly secure kind of biometric authentication.
Kaufman recently won a US patent for the design, but he says that his employer Raytheon has no plans to mass produce such a product at this time. Meanwhile, other pressure-sensitive computer mice such as Apple’s Magic Mouse are currently on the market, though none employ the technology for the purpose of security.
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October 7, 2014 – by Alex Perala
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