The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has officially announced its “Odin” program for biometric security research.
In a statement, IARPA – an arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – explained that the program is focused on advancing technologies to detect biometric presentation attacks, commonly known as ‘spoofing’. It will focus primarily on the facial, fingerprint, and iris modalities.
A key subset of the Odin program called “Thor” will focus specifically on the development of “new algorithms, sensors, and technologies to identify presentation attacks.” Solutions will be evaluated by independent teams from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, which will use “thousands of volunteers” to trial them.
While this is the first formal announcement of the Odin program from IARPA, Thor was launched well over a year ago. In April of this year, Crossmatch announced that it had won a contract pertaining to Thor work, and SRI International announced in June that it had been selected to work on the Odin program. In its new, official statement, IARPA indicated that it has also awarded Thor research contracts to Michigan State University and the University of Southern California.
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October 24, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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