Plant DNA to thwart SAT testing fraud ?


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As New York lawmakers consider a bill that would make cheating on the SAT college entrance exam a felony, one company thinks the answer to thwarting testing fraud can be found in molecules of plant DNA embedded into a secure identification card.

Dr. James Hayward, president and CEO of Long Island-based Applied DNA Sciences, Inc., said the "absolutely unbreakable" system features a counterfeit-proof identification card that uses molecules of plant DNA segments to authenticate a student's identity.

That identification card -- combining the embedded DNA info with an authentic photograph of the student -- forms a one-two identity verification that's impossible to fake or borrow, he said.

"We start with the whole genome of a plant and it doesn't matter which one," Hayward told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "Plants are a great choice because they have quite complex DNA, in some cases as complex or more complex than humans and they also have systems that enable them to endure stressors we don't normally expose humans to."

Once embedded into the card, Hayward said the "digital DNA" is then scanned using a smartphone and sent wirelessly to a secure database in a private cloud.

"We're capable of designing, in effect, an infinite number of markers, and we're able to embed those markers and encrypt it into a variety of media," he said. "It eliminates the potential for electronics to be counterfeited. In order to crack our DNA sequence, you'd have to know the sequence and that cannot be uncovered from the marker itself."

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If it cxan be coded it can be hacked. Until they use a truely secure quantum cryptography system, which doesn't exist yet, it doesn't have a chance.

I especially like the part where you back up this statement.
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Look it up:

The Univ. of Toronto, the Max Planck Institute and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have shown how to break many quantum key implementations, and history has proven non-quantum codings aren't sufficient - otherwise quantum key research wouldn't be necessary.

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Quantum Crypto has been shown to be breakable.

Anyways, it's beyond the skills of the average student, and if they can break it, I suspect they'd do ok on their SATs.

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