Windows Hello™ style authentication for Ubuntu

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Howdy for Ubuntu - https://github.com/Boltgolt/howdy#howdy-for-ubuntu
Just wanted to share a project that I am very fond of and have enjoyed playing with for the past few months. It is kinda buggy and doesn’t always work the greatest but the creator is pretty active in his development on it. Though he could use some help to be honest and I don’t know enough programming or dlib to help him out. I figured I would share this with you guys and if you like it maybe you could integrate this into more and more devices and systems.

  1. Screw RFID for door locks

  2. Pi Zero

  3. IR Camera

  4. Howdy - https://github.com/Boltgolt/howdy#howdy-for-ubuntu

  5. Get locked out your house

  6. Help out the project to keep that from happening again!

6 Likes
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Actually I should mention that after installing the latest version I am experiencing significantly less failed authentications as previously. This was mostly an issue with distance from the camera for me but I still thought I’d mention it.

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My face is my username, not my password.
I would use it for an inner door lock or something, but not for security.

Now, where is the last of the Aluminium food cover

1 Like
4

This is pretty neat, could you move this into a snap or flatpak?

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That was a joke about the whole RFID thing BTW. I mean it could be done sure. One of the problems the dev and I talked about regarding accuracy was that dlib has been trained with color images and nor IR. This is a problem that is much larger than the scope of this program though. Anyone willing to train a new deep learning AI out there?

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Well I’m neither the developer on the project nor really one in general. I merely wanted to share the project with more people. I am sure someone could package this with both snap and flatpak very easily. Sadly that person is not I. I still manage to just randomly break my Linux systems on occasions seemingly for no apparent reason.

1 Like
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One thing I do know is this integrates with pam so adding additional required authentication such as a GPG key or password isn’t hard. I mean if you all would like a written tutorial showing advanced options I could do one. The documentation on the github is really straightforward for how to install and get it working for basic authentication. I don’t think I would trust this not to lock you out making it a required authentication method. If you have some way of bypassing the face with another method maybe. Absolutely wouldn’t make it my sole method.

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It does look like a good project, and a good idea, so I’m not against it :slight_smile:
Just wouldn’t use it myself as a security measure, perhaps as a convenience tool?

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It is super convenient to have sometimes!