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Comment by mgerdts | Hacker News Reader

The company that was pitching my employer retina scanners on data center doors 20 years ago had an idea like this. Left eye gets you in, right eye gets you in and alerts security.

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As long as the sides are the employee's choice (i.e. the threat actor needs to not be able to know which eye is the duress one).

And you'd want to hide the eye choosing/scanning process so nobody could just watch an employee to figure out their preference.

Scanner is something you look in with both eyes. And then while your eyes are completely hidden you close one eye.

Heck. You could set it up so that it scans both eyes and then does a second scan where you choose what your ok signal is (both eyes, right only, left only, no eyes).

Yeah i think technicaly it could work. But I actually think that is a terrible idea. Humans have a lot less self control then we think. This will lead to many false alarms.

Good point, that's a very important requirement

Could also blink Morse code.

It’s been done before: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rufnWLVQcKg

If you wonder whether it's a video of an american pow blinking "torture" during an interview - yes, it is.

This is also very typical for regular alarm systems with a keypad.

A PIN disarms the alarms system, the same PIN + 1 disarms the alarm system and notifies security.

I worked at a place where the duress code was ROT5: 1234 was your normal access code, 6789 lerted security.

You're supposed to ROT5 mentally while in a state of high stress?

It doesn’t sound quite as onerous if you just memorize two 4 digit numbers by rote. But yes I agree the ROT5 is a dumb flourish.

Also consider that most of us recall an oft-used PIN as much via muscle memory as a pattern on the keypad rather than as the actual digits, which would make ROT5'ing it that much harder.

It wasn't a well-considered plan. It also wasn't highly advertised. I found out because someone happened to mention it to me one day.

Could use the method in The Wire: press the key on the opposite side to the usual key (e.g. 8 instead of 2, 6 instead of 4, etc.)

Better hope nobody uses 5555 as their pin then!

5 and 0 also swap

Edit: made it make sense

in ncis there was a security system where the pin had to be entered twice, only once would alert security.

This could also work with fingerprint scanners.

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