Google Glass to make air travel easier

[Xavier]

Who is ready for this?

Could Google Glass ease air travel?
In Business - By Sean O'Neill

Google’s internet-enabled eyewear, Glass, is undoubtedly the star of a nascent market in wearable computers. But while BBC News has reported that the tech giant won’t sell Glass until late 2014 at the earliest, airlines are already anticipating how it – and computerised spectacles like it – might someday improve security and other vital airport operations.

Nerdy or not, here it comes
In a demonstration at London’s Heathrow Airport, Kevin O’Sullivan, the lead engineer at SITA, a Geneva-headquartered technology consortium owned by the airline industry, donned his Google Glass headset and held up a passenger’s barcoded luggage tag. The device’s camera scanned the barcode, successfully crosschecking it against airport and airline databases, giving agents a real life solution to quickly locate the whereabouts of a missing bag.
That solution contrasts with today’s situation, where travellers needing help must hunt down the lost-luggage desk that’s staffed by the employees of a specific airline. Wearable technology would give any official roaming an airport the ability to fetch details about a lost bag and travellers could save time by approaching the first representative they saw, regardless of airline affiliation.
If there were a language barrier that made communication with a traveller more difficult, the agent could also request a translation by saying, "OK, Glass: how do you say, ‘Please give me your baggage tag’ in Japanese?"
Even at the airline gate, smart glasses could improve the customer experience. “Instead of an agent spending the entire time looking down at documents or their computers, he or she can look directly at passengers, while occasionally glancing at the heads-up display," O’Sullivan said.
Besides Google, other manufacturers such as Vuzix, Recon Instruments, NTT Docomo are also working to develop smart glass products.
A fresh look at boarding
Time is money for airlines, which get charged for the time they spend at the gate, and smart glasses could theoretically be used to help agents check passenger identification more quickly, therefore saving carriers time and gate fees. When a passenger steps forward to get on a flight, an agent could hold up the boarding pass and passport in front of their smart glasses, scanning barcodes on the two documents simultaneously.

Read the rest at BBC

[j-kid]

Google Glass wearers can steal your password:


By Erica Fink @EricaFink July 9, 2014: 2:26 PM ET

Remember the kid who tried to cheat off you by looking over your shoulder to copy your test answers? He's baaaack.

But this time he's wearing Google Glass -- and he's after your iPad PIN.

Cyber forensics experts at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell have developed a way to steal passwords entered on a smartphone or tablet using video from Google's face-mounted gadget and other video-capturing devices. The thief can be nearly ten feet away and doesn't even need to be able to read the screen -- meaning glare is not an antidote.
The security researchers created software that maps the shadows from fingertips typing on a tablet or smartphone. Their algorithm then converts those touch points into the actual keys they were touching, enabling the researchers to crack the passcode.
They tested the algorithm on passwords entered on an Apple (AAPL, Tech30) iPad,Google's (GOOGL, Tech30) Nexus 7 tablet, and an iPhone 5.
Related: Russia attacks U.S. oil and gas companies in massive hack
Why should you be worried?
"We could get your bank account password," researcher Xinwen Fu said.
The software can be applied to video taken on a variety of devices: Fu and his team experimented with Google Glass, cell phone video, a webcam and a camcorder. The software worked on camcorder video taken at a distance of over 140 feet.
Of course, pointing a camcorder in a stranger's face might yield some suspicion. The rise of wearable technology is what makes this approach actually viable. For example, a smartwatch could stealthily record a target typing on his phone at a coffee shop without drawing much attention.
Fu says Google Glass is a game-changer for this kind of vulnerability.
"The major thing here is the angle. To make this attack successful the attacker must be able to adjust the angle to take a better video ... they see your finger, the password is stolen," Fu said.
Related: Cybersecurity: How safe are you?
Google says that it designed Glass with privacy in mind, and it gives clear signals when it is being used to capture video.
"Unfortunately, stealing passwords by watching people as they type them into ATMs and laptops is nothing new," said a Google spokesman in an emailed statement. "The fact that Glass is worn above the eyes and the screen lights up whenever it's activated clearly signals it's in use and makes it a fairly lousy surveillance device."
Related: Yo got hacked. Don't be surprised
CNNMoney put the researchers' software to the test. We set up shop in our corporate cafeteria with the Google Glass-adorned security researcher 8.5 feet away from our iPad.
Fu and his colleagues said they could identify the password with 100% certainty if they recorded the login process three times. They also tested it with the Google Glasses on a robot, just in case the head movement of the researcher proved to be an issue.
In less than ten minutes they were able to accurately identify our password, 5-1-2-0. (It typically takes less time but CNNMoney Tech Correspondent Laurie Segall has short fingernails, which created less of a shadow for their software to analyze. They still got it right.)
The major vulnerability Fu's team identified is that keys are always in the same place on the keyboard. There are tools that can randomize the location of the keys on the keyboard so that a "9" might appear where a "1" is usually situated, but they are not common. The goal of work like this is to make such protections mainstream.

The research will be presented next month at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference.

First Published: July 7, 2014: 6:03 AM ET




VIDEO:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/07/tech...password-hack/