The humble Chromebook could be set for a further boost in security with the introduction of fingerprint scanners, at least according to the latest from the rumor mill.
As initially spotted by Chrome Unboxed, there's a source code commit in Chromium pertaining to fingerprint sensor support in an incoming Chromebook which has been codenamed 'Kevin' (or at least, the code points to the baseboard 'Gru', which is the baseboard of the aforementioned Kevin laptop).
Thus the buzz on the grapevine is we could soon see our first Chromebook with a fingerprint scanner on board, with possibly more to follow down the line.
PIN drop
It certainly wouldn't hurt Google to bolster security further with a hardware measure, and this follows the recent introduction of a PIN code system to Chrome OS which we reported on last month. (It's also possible to unlock your Chromebook with your Android device, if the latter is unlocked and in close proximity to the laptop – a feature called Smart Lock).
Of course, fingerprint readers for notebooks are hardly a new thing, and a fair few Windows laptops already come with scanners that work with Windows Hello (on Windows 10), which also supports face recognition and iris scanning for unlocking your device.
Naturally, these biometric measures are regarded as far more convenient and secure than traditional password protection, although as we saw recently in terms of face recognition, there are ways to potentially fool even these systems.
Via: Liliputing
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