Apple’s iPhone 5s Fingerprint Scanner Hacked
A group of people have seemingly gotten through what Apple boasts of as a leading innovation in smartphones - their patented fingerprint scanner security.
A group of German biometrics hackers collectively called "Chaos Computer Club" has successfully bypassed Apple's Touch ID security feature a couple of days after the iPhone 5s has been released.
The team reportedly bypassed the biometric security of the tech giant's flagship device "using easy everyday means."
Chaos Computer Club made use of fingerprints from the phone's user. The fingerprints were photographed with 2400 dpi resolution, cleaned up then inverted. The image was then printed with 1200 dpi onto a transparent sheet with a thick toner setting.
The final leg of the fingerprint recreation involved using pink latex milk or white wood glue which was smeared to the pattern. The result was cured, lifted off from the sheet and breathed on for moisture. The recreated fingerprint was then used to successfully unlock the iPhone 5s.
"In reality, Apple's sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake. As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints," said hacker nicknamed Starbug, in a report by Chaos Computer Club.
Chaos Computer Club's spokesperson, Frank Rieger, hopes that their group's successful bypass of Apple's Touch ID security feature will somehow "put to rest the illusions" that people have regarding the boasted technology.
"The public should no longer be fooled by the biometrics industry with false security claims. Biometrics is fundamentally a technology designed for oppression and control, not for securing everyday device access," he said in the report.
This isn't the first time biometrics security has been compromised. Another group led by researchers Antti Kaseva and Antti Stén hacked a Windows-based fingerprint scanner a decade ago.
"The hack is to create an artificial finger using a mold that is manufactured from a latent fingerprint left by the legitimate user. The fingerprint can be obtained from just about anywhere, mug, door handle, rail etc. With this artificial finger the hacker should be able to intrude a system if the mandatory smart card required for logon is available and in use," the group said in a report by ZDNet.
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