Fingerprint readers. Face Unlock. Retinal scanners. They're all no better than your average password, at least the way Dr. Karl Martin sees it. "Your face, your iris — they're all physical features that can be stolen, that you leave everywhere."
Luckily, Dr. Martin has a better idea. He's planning to use it to open everything from our phones to our front doors, and even move the car seat exactly how we want it. All we have to do is wear a bracelet.
Martin's startup, Bionym, is going public with its first device, the Nymi, after research and development that goes back more than 10 years. It centers on a person's electrocardiogram, a measure not of your heart rate but of the electrical activity generated by your heart. A person's ECG is dependent on the size, position, and physiology of their heart, and it's completely unique to every person. It's as unique to you as your fingerprint, and unlike your fingerprint you're not leaving your ECG on glasses or windows or cell phones everywhere you go. That ECG is what Bionym uses to identify you as you.
The Nymi itself is a bracelet, virtually indistinguishable from the Fitbit Flex or the Jawbone Up. When you put it on, you tap it with your opposite hand to create a full circuit and give the Nymi the measurement it needs. From then on, it's constantly authenticating — that you're the person wearing the device, that you're wearing the right device, and that you're connecting it to the right smartphone or tablet. The Nymi's always making sure you are who you say you are, and is telling everything around you whether you're right or not. (Its ability to tell other devices who you are could also enable remarkably personalized advertising, a slightly more worrisome use of the technology.)
It's also full of sensors that tell certain devices how far away you are; someone else can't open your phone from across the room. But you can unlock your phone without a password, because it'll know you're holding it. The Nymi's authentication is so good and so trustworthy that Martin hopes it will be used for payments, passwords, even your car and house doors. Imagine sitting down at your computer and never needing a password, but knowing that when you walk away your logins go with you.
Martin says the Nymi doesn't even have to be a bracelet. "It could be a ring, a necklace, a waistband, anything. The wristband is just the first idea. We'll see what people want to do." All a Bionym device needs, he says, is a mechanism like a clasp to make it clear it's been taken off. That's just one of many security safeguards that come with the Nymi: it won't work if it's not paired with the right device, or if you're not wearing the right bracelet. It also offers "liveness detection," which means your captors can't just rip your heart out and hack your computer with it. "The unique thing about the ECG," Martin says, "is that it's being produced inside your body."
The Nymi's most obvious role is in obviating your passwords, which Martin says is a problem long begging for a solution. "For me, passwords are the worst thing ever... before the Nymi I'm using a password manager. But then on my mobile device, it doesn't work — I have to copy the password, and switch. It's terrible." The Google- and PayPal-backed FIDO Alliance has made some headway solving the problem, but many of its current solutions still rely on USB sticks and fingerprint readers. The Nymi promises to be both more secure and more elegant, and would be a welcome addition for FIDO; FIDO would also provide Bionym with massive interoperability, and is one of the partners Martin talked eagerly about.
But Martin has bigger plans. "We're really interested in how to create hyper-personalized experiences," he tells me, which includes everything from setting the ambient temperature when you walk into a room to remembering your particular settings on the washing machine. Couple that with the rudimentary gesture recognition in the bracelet, and Martin doesn't sound so crazy when he says we'll be able to unlock our car, open its trunk, and start playing our favorite radio station with just one flick of our wrist.
For now, Martin and Bionym are courting developers large and small to build apps and devices that use its method of authentication. "If you think of any of the top mobile manufacturers," he tells me, "we are most likely engaged with them. They saw this was a huge additive value to what they do." The Nymi is scheduled to come out sometime next year, and will cost $99. It's not the first product to read a person's ECG — it's used on a few devices in the medical community — but it's the first that promises to do it well and for everyday people.
Bionym's challenge is gaining enough trust and support for its product; unless it's ubiquitous, it's doomed. Martin doesn't sound worried — he's more like impatient. "I've got keys in my pocket, and they're scratching whatever else is in my pocket. I want to go home and my door is unlocked and that's it." Even if it's not his product that does it, Martin believes he's on the front lines solving a huge problem both for oft-hacked companies like Google and for everyday people.
"Do you think 100 years from now we're going to be doing this? We're going to have to remember all our passwords, carry our stupid keys around? I hope not."
Comments
This is one of the reasons it is important to have engineers and scientists behind companies, they can innovate beyond the superficial. Nymi is very clever.
By oflife on 09.03.13 8:10am
Yep, but I think this one :
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mclear/nfc-ring
Is even less intrusive.
By etique57 on 09.03.13 8:15am
It might be…but it’s also way less secure. With that ring they don’t even need to ask for your password or take you captive…they could steal your ring and access all of your accounts.
By hotleadsingerguy on 09.03.13 8:30am
no because it doesn’t work unless your ECG is being inputted to the ring
By hunkpapa on 09.03.13 8:49am
Umm no. The NFC ring has no ECG readings all it has are two very small NFC pads that don’t require battery power. The product in above article needs to be charged and it measures your ECG and presumably connects to devices with Bluetooth 4.0/NFC so that only you can unlock your stuff.
Personally think its awesome and ill be buying one
By crispinds on 09.03.13 9:07am
you know what would be super awesome? kinetic charging. literally the only thing that keeps me from buying into this idea 1000% is the fear of the thing dying on me.
By gogadgetgo on 09.03.13 1:52pm
Where does it say that? I would have thought the company that makes it would want to mention that kind of feature on their Kickstarter page.
By cgimusic on 09.03.13 11:40am
By cwchase on 09.03.13 11:09am
..as far as security goes, what this “nymi” would talk to and how matters way more than the actual device, doing the measurements is a neat trick but it’s just a measurement.
By lassikin on 09.03.13 1:15pm
No it’s not clever:
- first of all, I don’t want to wear a bracelet
- second if everything is depending on one electronic device what happens when it brakes?
- when all equipment will be “bracelet” enabled, I’m forced to use it, and…pay for such a device
It’s a no no for me.
It should be an option and doesn’t cause any issues / problems when choosing not to use it.
By artic on 09.03.13 9:02am
Doesn’t mean it’s not clever, just means you don’t like it – and of course there will have to be alternative options, just as the passport is an alternative to a driver’s license in many situations.
By awesomerobot on 09.03.13 9:04am
well the clever part would be that the nymi thing would be built into the device.
now a hacked nymi setup will let you be anyone you’ve held hands with, no?
By lassikin on 09.03.13 1:16pm
Who’s saying everyone would HAVE to use it? Your car keys would still work. Your house key would still work. You’d still have a password option on your devices.
This is a step forward for those that WANT this. It is clever. Obviously, it’s not for you.
By xyzoptics on 09.03.13 9:05am
breaks
He also said it didn’t need to be a bracelet that it could be anything. Maybe you should read the article before you impress us all with your stupidity.
By pavodog on 09.03.13 9:06am
I’m impressed by it.
By HongKongPhooey on 09.05.13 1:53am
Not to mention the hawkward moment when you realize you forgot to recharge the battery.
By enaki on 09.03.13 9:25am
That is a lame excuse to not like any tech. If it uses power and is mobile, it’s pretty much a fact of life. I am sick to death of people throwing that out as if it is a real problem. If this happens to you a lot, YOU are the problem. And for the people who blame tech for their shortcomings, engineers can’t fix stupid.
By ttringle on 09.03.13 11:31am
No, that is not true, battery technology still has a LOT of room to improve. Many designs out there are flat out embarrassing in terms of battery life. If something needs power, battery life should be at the top of any designers list.
By never4getthis on 09.03.13 3:54pm
Absolutely. If a device is fundamental for your daily life (and this one could actually be), you should never worry about these kind of problems. If you have to worry, the problem is in the device, not in the user.
A user that uses something in a wrong way is a thing, a user that is limited by the device’s inefficencies is quite a different story.
By enaki on 09.06.13 7:58am
Good news, it doesn’t have to be a bracelet. Maybe actually read the article before you post?
By trulyunlimited2 on 09.03.13 9:28am
Correct. Its not clever. Hamsters sre clever. It is briliant, ingenious, and my friend hopefully the way of the future. You do realize the key to your car doesnt protect it from theft. Its the chip inside the key. Now you know why many new cars dont have a “key”. Keys are something that should have gone away long ago. So too should the redundant annoying password. They are so antiquated it pains me to use them. The future is integration with our indispensable technical personal armada. Think user friendly yet still protected. And what happens when it “brakes”? Well it stops of course. Now if it BREAKS, well you will just have to get it fixed.
By simplefuture on 09.03.13 10:35am
Real keys don’t need batteries and are immune to ESD.
Your future is a bit too simple. And fault intolerant.
By VoxMeme on 09.03.13 10:43am
Physical keys are also a lot more insecure. Anyone who has them can use them. This tech only works if you want it to, unless you’re coerced of course.
By QuarterSwede on 09.03.13 11:46am
Couldn’t the same be said for anyone who has your bracelet?
By Velvet_Spaceman on 09.03.13 3:44pm
No, that’s the whole point of the design of the bracelet…
By meballard on 09.03.13 6:45pm