Unlock keyring with fingerprint reader on login

Question

I recently bought a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E420s, which comes with a fingerprint reader. I have installed the fingerprint-gui and libbsapi to get it fully working (make: UPEK).

Is there a way to unlock the keyring on login using the fingerprint reader?

Apparently you can get it working by setting a blank password when using Thinkfinger, but that's not an option for me.

Running lsusb in the terminal returns Bus 001 Device 003: ID 147e:1002 Upek

Solution 1

The whole pourpose of the keyring is to store your passwords and data on your storage device. To do that securely, they must be encrypted with something you know (your password). To unlock the keyring, you must provide the password so that gnome-keyring can decrypt the stored passwords. Your fingerprint can not be used as a password because it is not always the same. Fingerprint readers apply some fuzzy logic to tell if the stored fingerprint matches the read fingerprint and tell yes or no. That's why it can be used for authentication, but not for decryption of stored passwords (unless you have a blank password or would accept storing your master password unencrypted) The only way it could work is if the fingerprint device could store your master password on a chip in plaintext that could only be read if the fingerprint matches. And that's assuming that reading the internal memory/registers of a chip is much much harder than reading your local storage. I really don't know how it is done under windows, and I hope it is not security through obscurity. But if they're not using hardware to do this, they're simply using some obscure (but insecure) method to store your passwords.

Solution 2

this is currently a bug with GNOME-Keyring it was listed as invaild during the previous year but they recently opened back up for 11.04 and are working on it as of May 7th 2011 hope this helps

https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-keyring/+bug/276384

Solution 3

i managed to create a simple script to unlock the keyring. I'm no security expert and this is by no means a reccomended way to do it, but as i always say convenience is inversely proportional to security. besides for fingerprint log in, your fingerprint are probably all over the device your protecting anyway...

anyway without further ado this is one way to do it:

• create a simple text file somewhere for this example i will create it at /etc/gnome/pwd.txt. this file will contain your keyring password and nothing else
• run chmod 600 /etc/gnome/pwd.txt so that only the file owner can read it
• now you need to run chown $USER:$USER /etc/gnome/pwd.txt to ensure that only your user can read this file
• create script called say fbi with these contents:

#!/bin/bash
/bin/echo -n $(/bin/cat /etc/gnome/pwd.txt)|/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login

• then also run set the permissions right with chmod 700 /absolute/path/to/fbi and chown $USER:$USER /absolute/path/to/fbi
• now make user service by creating a file called say /etc/systemd/user/cia.service with the following contents

[Unit]
Description=Super Top Secret Service

[Service]
ExecStart=/absolute/path/to/fbi

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

• run systemctl --user enable cia and voila now you automagically unlock your keyring on login

it is secure? no it is not. if someone got a hold of your harddrive, sure they can't read the keyring, but they can find the file that contains the password. this has no real benefit, as far as i can tell, from simply setting a blank password. it is convenient? sure is. and hey you can also save not save your passwordfile on the machine your trying to protect :^3 still not secure tho if that file gets into the wrong hands

Comments

[Admin]

Could you post the make of your fingerprint reader or at least the usb id?

[Admin]

Check out my second sentence :) I'm pretty sure it's an UPEK.

[Admin]

Yes that's the brand but there is more than one upek fingerprint reader usbid would be very helpful.

[Admin]

I've updated my question with the usbid of the fingerprint reader.

[dsaint]

i don't know if their are work around.

[Itamar Kerbel]

It seems like my reader is not supported, "No devices detected." is returned when I try to set it up.

[crazyTechie]

Hmm ok it was worth a try.

[htorque]

Triaged doesn't mean that anyone is working on it. blog.launchpad.net/general/of-bugs-and-statuses

[Frosty]

sorry my bad, but they did open the issue back up

[cprn]

Can't anything be connected to the pam.d pipe to unlock keyrings on login?

[Piotr Czekalski]

Pingback: This issue is still unresolved in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

[Елин Й.]

The whole purpose of the fingerprint login is to not to type in a password on login. If I have to type the password just after the login to unlock the keyring, this defeats the whole purpose of that fingerprint reader.

[Fuseteam]

is there a way to store to password and unlock the keyring that way? while insecure it will at least enable some setup to work around it, it could be stored on a usb stick and used with pamusb for example

[Fuseteam]

fprint won't unlock the keyring either sadly