April 15, 2005 — CSO — Technology Once upon a time, a sword could be released from a stone only by a warrior who had the magic touch. Today, technology is replacing magic with the development of smart guns.
Dynamic grip recognition (DGR) identifies the unique grip of a person holding and firing a gun. "We need to make sure that the only person who can shoot a gun is the person who's supposed to," says Donald Sebastian, senior vice president of research and development and professor in the industrial and manufacturing engineering department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
Michael Recce, associate professor of IS and inventor of DGR, received a patent for the technology in May 2003. Recce's software enabled his colleague, Timothy Chang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, to develop sensors, which are embedded in the grip of the gun, to authenticate users. The technology uses biometrics to identify, within one-tenth of a second, the unique and recognizable hand pressure variations. When a gun is held, each sensor receives tiny variations of pressure and creates a distinct electrical signal. That signal is transmitted to a microprocessor, which then creates a map of the pressure and movement. The grip pattern is then stored in the microprocessor, which is used to verify users in testing trials.
Sebastian says the research was initiated to eradicate gun-related child deaths. Initially funded by the New Jersey legislature with $1.5 million, the research has secured an additional $2 million during the past two years.
Although a wired gun with DGR is currently being tested in the lab, Chang says that by April 2005 an untethered version with the embedded electronics should be ready. Once user-identification trials are complete and reliability is established, the next phase of the project will begin
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I got an email yesterday asking if teenage hacking is on the rise. At first I balked. Teenage hackers have always been in abundance, so the question seemed stupid to me. Then I remembered something about teens that the SANS Institute's Alan Paller mentioned at a conference last week. Let's start with that press release, which framed the scenario this way: - Busted: When security tools fail
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