GSA’s Login.gov looks to device fingerprinting to fight fraud, AI agents and bots

The General Services Administration is seeking to combat identity fraud by adding more device fingerprinting to Login-dot-gov, the government’s unified account manager, according to contracting documents posted Tuesday. The “sophistication and volume” of fraud attempts have grown as the service’s user base and agency adoption have expanded, the request for information said. While Login-dot-gov already uses fingerprinting within its identity verification flow, “there is an opportunity to enhance the platform’s comprehensive fraud prevention strategy,” documents said. “This capability is essential for detecting sophisticated fraud attacks including account takeover, synthetic identity fraud, automated bot activity, residential proxy abuse, and emerging agentic [artificial intelligence] threats,” they said. Device fingerprinting identifies visitors through browser, device and network signals rather than just traditional identifiers like IP addresses or cookies, the request said. The solution GSA is exploring would integrate fingerprinting into account creation and sign-in, provide real-time risk signals for fraud detection and identify returning devices, “even when users attempt to evade detection through VPNs, residential proxies, incognito browsing, cookie clearing, or browser tampering,” the documents said.

Homeland Security Investigations is failing to provide its agents with the tech toolbelt needed to address fentanyl entering the U.S., according to an inspector general report published last week. The watchdog found that HSI, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, spent millions to develop data analysis and information-sharing tools that underperformed and went unused. The primary technology in question is the HSI-built Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment platform, referred to as RAVEn. The platform was created to host a suite of data-analysis tools that were designed to support criminal investigations. DHS poured more than $150 million into the endeavor and deployed the technology in November 2022. Just three years later, HSI began decommissioning it. “One officer described RAVEn as ‘atrocious,’ and another stated the platform hindered drug investigations instead of helping them,” the inspector general office said in the report.

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