MEL’SWORLD
8 MARCH2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE
Secrets ofthe underworld
IT’SBACKGAMMONNIGHTat
the Hole in the Wall, and
someone is missing. Old Monty
is not propping up the bar,and I
assume the worst. But when Iask
around it seems that Monty is
neither dead nor in jail, but
sunning his arse in Miami Beach,
which is more or less the same
thing in my opinion. Anyway, it’s
all thanks to Google’s Pixel 4
smartphone,and it involves a
long story which Iwillnow
explain foryou in concise and
simple terms. Here goes.
Old Monty used to work for
IBM, until theyfired him. Then he
worked forBT, until theyfired
him. And finally he worked for
the Bell-Fruit Gaming
Corporation, who also fired him,
but not before he slipped a
creative back-door patch in the
electromechanical logic circuit of
their Noel Edmonds Deal Or No
Deal one-armed bandit.
This allowed him to trigger the
jackpot by pressing Hold-Lowith
his lefthand, Hold-Hi with his
right hand, Spin with his nose
and the Collect knob with his
own knob.But when the Noel
Edmonds Deal Or No Deal model
fell out of favour, Monty fell on
hard times and sank to spoofing
access codes on stolen mobiles
in order to blag Deliveroo meals,
Uber rides and the occasional
Secret Escapes beach holiday.
Those alphanumeric security
codes were tiresome forMonty
to break, and it would often take
him hours after meeting anew
victim at the bar.His opening
gambit was to wait until they
consulted their phone and say
something like,“Ican never
remember my PIN, so Iuse 1234.
How about you?” Then he would
challenge them to agame,let
them win and become their
Facebook friend, because he
knew that nobody in their right
mind would reveal their dateof
birth, pet’s name,firstschool or
holidayplans to astranger
playing backgammon in the Hole
in the Wall, but Facebook users
are not in their right minds,
especially those with banking
apps in their pocket.
BOOGIEWONDERLAND
Banking apps with voice-
recognition security were child’s
playtoMonty.Heboasted that
he could get Siri to playBoogie
Woogie Bugle Boyby BobbyBlue
just by farting in the bath.
Anyway, when HSBC introduced
‘my voice is my password’ access
to telephone banking accounts,
its software relied on complex
voice biometrics of sound,
rhythm, pattern, dialect, style,
pitch, frequency and spectral
magnitude.But Old Monty didn’t
bother with any of that rubbish;
he just got his victim to playthe
‘my voice is my password’ game,
and recorded them repeating the
phrase several times before
nicking their phone.
When Apple introduced
fingerprint scanning on the
iPhone 5, Old Monty toyed with
the idea of exploiting his famous
magic trick accident to cut off a
victim’s index finger.This would
allow him to access the target
phone while the sucker was
otherwise engaged in A&E, but
the landlord banned the use of
his paper-trimming guillotine
because he said it cluttered up
the bar.SoMonty had to fake
living fingerprints instead.
He would spot some
loudmouth drinking arevolting
fruit beer from asmall bottle, and
nick the empty bottle along with
their phone.Thiswas ajustifiable
punishment in my opinion.
Back in his bedsit, Monty used
superglue vapour to reveal the
fingerprint grease pattern,then
he photographed and printed it
on to afoil slide,squirted it with
wood glue,waited forthe glue to
dry,cut it out and stuck it on his
own finger.Sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn’t, but either
wayheenjoyed sniffingthe glue.
THEEYESHAVEIT.UNLOCK!
Which brings me to facial
recognition, and the latest
chapter in Monty’s criminal
career.Hecomplained that it was
all but impossible to spoofa
living three-dimensional face,and
his tactic of swiping aphone and
asking the victim to ‘close your
eyes, no peeking, and I’ll buy you
apint’ didn’t work at all. If they
peeked, they’d spot him holding
up their own phone in front of
their face and deck him, and if
theykept their eyes shut the
phone simply wouldn’t recognise
them. Monty tried scanning the
obituary columnbeforeturningup
at the chapel of rest pretending
to be agrieving relative in need
of aprivatemoment with the
deceased. But corneal opacity
tends to glitch facial recognition,
even when the face is perfectly
still because of rigor mortis.
Besides, friends and relatives had
usually nicked the phone already.
Monty was stumped, unlike
his putative finger amputees, and
as more phones became secured
by facial recognition, the poorer
he became.That’s of course until
good old Google came to the
rescue with the new Pixel 4. He
welcomed the arrival of itsFace
Unlock system with unbridled
joy, because unlike Apple’s
eyes-open ‘alert’ failsafe, the
Pixel 4vomits its secrets even
when the camera scans aface
with eyes closed. Monty ran
adverts on social media along the
lines of,“Looking forfun?Then
come and join our backgammon
club.Mustlike real ale,exotic
lingerie and own aGooglePixel 4.”
Cheers Monty,wherever you are!
Anyway, there’s no one here
who wants to playbackgammon
with me tonight, so it’s probably
time to get off Old Monty’s bar
stool, go home and –um, hang
on aminute, Ican’t seem to find
my phone.
MEL CROUCHER
Tech pioneer and all-round good egg
[email protected]
As morephones became secured byfacial
recognition, the poorer Montybecame
From surreptitiouslyrecording victims’ voicestochopping offtheirfingerstounlock
theirphones,MelCroucher’sdrinking buddyhasawealthofwaystomakecrime pay
