Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Difference between revisions

'''Kryten:''' Sir, you are ''sick!'' You are a ''sick, sick person!'' How can you possibly even conceive of such an idea?

'''Lister:''' Hey, cheer up... or I'll beat you to death with the wet end.

 

Once upon a time, infiltrating a base was pretty easy: just knock the guards out, take the keys, and get in. Fortunately, modern high-tech facilities, or in [[The Future]] have more cunning devices, and can identify the guards by unique biological features, such as handprints or retinal scans. These cunning devices are reliable, efficient, and not prone to believing just anyone who happens to be [[Dressing as the Enemy|wearing the right uniform]]. Great, huh?

 

Note that this is not about bypassing biometric scanners in in general. This is about the ''bloody'' way to get around them.

 

== Comic Books ==

* [[The Joker]] once gained access to a government vault by Joker toxin-ing the guards and dragging one over to a biometric scanner. The vault, incidentally, held Doomsday.

* In a ''Weird Worlds'' story, when an elevator [[Lobo]]'s hijacked reaches his destination, the doors won't open. The elevator attendant explains that they're tied to his DNA, the sensor for which is several floors up, where they just came from, but the elevator won't go back up because he didn't have the chance to use the sensor when Lobo got on. Since there's no ceiling between them and the sensor, Lobo just blows the attendant's brains out, splattering his blood on the sensor.

 

 

== Film ==

* Simon Phoenix in ''[[Demolition Man]]'' gets through a door locked with a retina scanner by removing the authorized man's eye. Surprisingly having a pen jammed into it (to hold it with) doesn't seem to obscure the retina at all.

** Might have been an iris scanner, of course.

* In ''[[Die Another Day]]'', [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] and Jinx get past a hand scanner by severing the arm of a recently killed henchman and pressing it against the scanner.

** In ''[[Never Say Never Again]]'', the remake of ''[[Thunderball]]'' (both starring [[Sean Connery]] as Bond), a bad guy had an eye transplant to get past a retinal scanner protecting some nuclear weapons.

* Subverted in ''[[District 9]]''. Since the alien weaponry can only be used by an alien hand, various attempts are made to use severed arms to fire the guns. That doesn't work, though, since the arms need to be ''alive''.

* In [[The Film of the Book]] of ''[[The Dead Zone]],'' John Smith has a vision of Gregory Stillson as president. Stillson is hot to launch a nuclear strike at the Soviet Union, but to activate the Nuclear Football, he needs a general's handprint-scan in addition to his own. Stillson tells the general, "Put your hand on that pad or I'll cut it off and do it myself!"

* In ''[[National Treasure]]'', Gates uses Chase's thumbprint he acquired to infiltrate the vault storing the Declaration of Independence.

* In ''[[The Avengers (film)|The Avengers]]'', Loki and his minions use a fancy piece of stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. tech that lets them scan someone's eye and turn it into a hologram good enough to fool a retina scanner. Loki probably didn't ''have'' to [[Eye Scream|jam it right into the poor man's eye socket tho]]...

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Rebel Force: Trapped]]'' has Luke Skywalker going through an Imperial base with a stolen passcard just fine until he reaches a palm scanner. Fortunately, it was guarded by the only two stormtroopers he'd encountered in the base who were inclined to shoot first, so he could kill them and use one's hand without violating his [[Martial Pacifist]] preferences.

* In [[Kim Newman]]'s ''[[Dark Future (novel)|Dark Future]] novel ''[[Krokodil Tears]],'' via a severed hand, this is how Jessamyn bypasses the security system locking down Bronson Manolo's DeLorean in Dead Rat.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[Torchwood]]'', "End of Days" with Capt. Jack. He's not killed ''for'' it but it's revealed after Owen kills him that they need his retinal scan to okay the use of the Rift Manipulator, so they hold his corpse up to the scanner. [[Immortality|Like always]], Jack gets better.

** In ''[[Torchwood: Miracle Day]]'', Jack and Gwen use non-invasive methods to get the biometric data from their target... the assassin chasing them, however, is a little more pressed for time. Bonus points for needing {{spoiler|both a hand and an eye}}. The tissue in question is immortal and thus still counts as alive, ripped off or not.

** To wit: One of them was fooled by a ''black and white computer printout of the finger in question'' (that had been licked to cover salinity).

** They also found that the expensive reader sold to be used as a door lock, was easier to fool than the cheap one used as a log-in device on a laptop.

{{quote|'''Data''': I assume your hand print will open this door, whether you are conscious or not.}}

* In the [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]] episode "Who Mourns for Morn?" a criminal from the Orion Syndicate threatens to do this to Quark, needing his thumb to sign for delivery of a package. His brother points out that they can't very well expect to be taken seriously if they use a severed thumb to sign the invoice.

{{quote|"Give this to Dr. Gilligan."

"What is it?"

* Averted in the fourth season of ''[[Burn Notice]]'', but only because Larry doesn't have a bonesaw with which to remove the dead Brennen's left hand, a fact he laments.

* The paintball game show Crossfire had one "mission" to steal a handily tanked "eyeball" to use on the enemy base biometric scanners. Since on at least one occasion the entire team were wiped on that mission, the host had a tank with his gran's eyeball in - "because who could refuse a little old lady access?"

 

== Tabletop RPG ==

* ''[[Shadowrun]]''. This is noted in ''The Neo-Anarchists' Guide to Real Life'' as a way to fool biometric security devices (such as doors and credsticks). Unfortunately the devices' designers have figured this out and altered the devices to check and see if the body part being used is still alive and attached to a body.

 

== Video Games ==

** But played straight in the 2010 ''[[Alien vs. Predator]] game where the Predator has to use a severed head to open several doors with retinal scanner locks.

* Used in the original ''[[System Shock]]'', where you can use the entire head of an (already-dead) officer onboard the ship to reach an optional area.

* Quite gruesomely done in ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'' where after defeating Mendez in his plaga form his false eye pops out, whereupon Leon scoops it up and puts it in the scanner. If you examine the glass eye (probably because you're wondering [[Fridge Logic|why in the heck]] a ''retinal scanner'' can read it), you learn that the glass eye [[Hand Wave|had an encryption on the outside, which is what the scanner reads]].

* The combination of glass eye and retinal scanner also pops up in ''[[The Longest Journey]]''.

* ''[[Xenogears]]'' has an even more cold-blooded example: {{spoiler|When Bart's enemy Shakan learns that the "Fatima Jasper" needed to unlock the Fatima Treasure is in fact the brilliant blue-green eyes possessed by members of the royal bloodline, he exhumes the bodies of Margie's parents and plucks out their eyeballs.}} It's kind of hard to call this [[Kick the Dog]], since this character [[Complete Monster|can't walk two feet without punting a puppy]]. But that doesn't mean it's not incredibly satisfying to beat the shit out of him in the [[Boss Battle]].

* In ''[[Penumbra (video game series)|Penumbra]]: Black Plague'' you get past several security scanners like this, using blood to enter the kitchen, then a hand and head to enter the library. Interestingly, one door that leads to the cryogenic freezer has a hand scanner that when you try to scan the hand you have already procured at this point, tells you that the person whom this hand belongs to is in critical condition and will not accept it.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'': [http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/21p61/ "Allow me to perform a simple amputation, and I'll be right back."] [[Subverted]] in that the dinos have figured that trick out. [http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/21p62/ So they have to do something different].

 

 

 

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