Thanks to a close call in Washington, DC, the first proverbial shots have been fired in the coming war on domestic drone with flights now restricted around the White House. No-fly zones are not exactly new, but this represents a step away from clearing airspace around airplanes and opens the door to blocking drones in other settings as well.

Built environment expert (and author of an upcoming book on domestic burglary) Geoff Manaugh suggests that “fortifying our homes against drone incursion will be the next bull market in security: whole subdivisions designed to thwart drone flights, marketed to potential homeowners specifically for that very reason.”

This could take various forms – imagine “installing perimeter defenses or some sort of jamming blanket, an electromagnetically-active geotextile disguised beneath the mulch. Complex nets and spiderweb-like antennas go on sale at Home Depot, perfect for snaring drone rotors and leading to an explosion in suburban bird deaths.”

Given the fallibility of the firmware updates DJI and other drone manufacturers are using to create no-go zones for drones it is not so much of a stretch to imagine physical infrastructure and custom security solutions designed to create additional areas of privacy and/or provide redundancy – backup systems for when the software fails to do its job.

Of course, countermeasures could fight software with software, too – consider this scenario: “You won’t just turn on a burglar alarm with your handy smartphone app; you’ll also switch on signal-jamming networks hidden in the trees or a location-scrambling geofence camouflaged as a garden gnome at the edge of your well-mown lawn. Drones, dazzled by invisible waves of unpredictable geographic information, will perform U-turns or sudden dives, even racing off to a pre-ordained security cage where they can be pulled from the air and disabled.”

The post Drone Defense: Future of Electomagnetic & Geo-Fencing first appeared on Gajitz.

It’s hard enough for us to remember to take our keys every time we leave the house, but also remembering the numeric combinations for combo locks? Out of the question. We usually end up either putting the combination on the back of the lock or eventually breaking the thing when we can’t remember whether that was supposed to be an 11 or a 17.

The Image Lock is a quirky way to secure your stuff without the pressure of memorizing combinations (which are basically just more passwords on top of all of the digital ones you already have to remember). Instead of using numbers to unlock, the Image Lock uses – you probably guessed this already – images. So instead of remembering random strings of numbers, the combination for your tool shed is Star-Monkey-Chicken, and the one to open your bike is Heart-Umbrella-Heart.

Ali Nawaz is the former US Marine who invented the Image Lock. On the front lines in Afghanistan, he saw a need to physically secure items but noticed how hard it was to remember multiple numeric codes. He figured the Image Lock could make life a little simpler since you could even make up a little story to go along with the pictures in your combination. The Image Lock hit up Kickstarter for initial funding and just barely met its goal, meaning that the cool low-tech password-overload solution should be available for purchase soon.

The post Storage Story: Combo Lock Opens With Pics, not Numbers first appeared on Gajitz.

As far as personal security goes, wearing a suit of surveillance cameras might just be taking things a little too far. But Seoul-based collective Shinseungback Kimyonghun have created exactly that, and they call it the Aposematic Jacket.

The designers liken the jacket to an animal’s bright coloring which screams to predators that they shouldn’t mess with that potential prey. The jacket tells nearby people that they can and will be recorded, which tends to be a successful deterrent to crime.

With the push of a button, the tiny cameras and their lenses on the garment record in 360 degrees and immediately send the images online. The program or app associated with the jacket could presumably notify a friend, family member, or the authorities to the danger.

Alternatively, the images could simply be stored for use later in identifying attackers. If nothing else, the jacket could be used for some positively fascinating (and creepy) people-watching on the train or bus.

The post Smile, You’re On Jacket Camera: Personal Security Coat first appeared on Gajitz.

The use of security smoke has deterred crimes all over the world for years. A criminal tries to break in and they are welcomed by a thick cloud of fog that obscures their vision and freaks them out enough to drive them away. It’s a pretty effective deterrent, but its very nature makes actually catching the crooks difficult since any security cameras tend to be rendered completely useless by thick banks of fog.

SmokeCloak, a manufacturer of fog security systems, has teamed up with Applied DNA Sciences to create a security fog that actually marks the criminals with distinctive DNA so they can later be caught and identified. The DNA is plant-based and completely harmless; it’s even invisible so the bad guys have no idea they’ve been marked.

Each location where the system is installed has its own unique DNA formation, created by cutting up plant DNA and rearranging it. When a suspect is caught, cops perform a simple-ish DNA test and can then prove that the suspect was involved in something shady. The system can also be used to flood a warehouse or shop during non-working hours so that if products go missing, the products themselves can later be identified once recovered. It’s a pretty futuristic take on security tags that’s way more effective than a buzzer going off at the door.

The post DNA-Laced Security Fog Catches Crooks With Rad Science first appeared on Gajitz.

Storing all of your passwords on your computer might be convenient and easy, but it’s definitely not secure. The EyeLock Myris is also a convenient and easy way to store your passwords, but it’s exceptionally secure.

The small USB-powered device is a handheld iris scanner that keeps your passwords safe using biometric data. Every iris is different – your eyes are kind of like fingerprints, only more unique. The iris scanner can store the unique biometric iris data of up to five people, so everyone in your household can ditch the typed passwords.

The Myris takes a split-second image of your eyes whenever you want to sign into your computer or access a password-protected program or website. It scans more than 240 points of your irises in less than a second, providing a government-grade encrypted signature that keeps all of your data secure.

When you program the Myris, you can make your actual passwords as complex as you like to protect them from hackers – but there’s no need to remember them. The device stores them on-board, not on your computer, so they are well and truly secure. And the chances of getting a false positive from someone else holding the Myris up to their own eyes? About one in 1.5 million.

The post Eye Feel Safe: Biometric Iris Scanner Secures All Your Data first appeared on Gajitz.