Hackers have already bypassed Apple’s fingerprint scanner using fake fingerprints, and now they have found a way to reproduce your fingerprints by using just a couple of photos of your fingers.
Special Fingerprint sensors have already been used by Apple and Samsung in their smartphones for authentication purposes and in near future fingerprints sensors are believed to be the part of plenty of other locked devices that can be unlocked using fingerprints, just to add an extra layer of authentication. But, How secure are your fingerprints?
A member of Europe’s oldest hacker collective, the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), claimed to have cloned a fingerprint of a Germany’s federal minister of defense, Ursula von der Leyen, using pictures taken with a “standard photo camera“ at a news conference.
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At the 31st annual Chaos Computer Conference in Hamburg Germany this weekend, biometrics researcher Starbug, whose real name is Jan Krissler, explained that he used a close-up photo of Ms von der Leyen’s thumb that was taken with a “standard photo camera” at a presentation in October — standing nine feet (3 meters) away from the official. He also used several other pictures of her thumb taken at different angles.
Starbug then used a publicly available software program called VeriFinger with photos of the finger taken from different angles to recreate an accurate thumbprint. According to CCC, this software is good enough to fool fingerprint security systems
“After this talk, politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public,” Starbug told the audience at the Chaos Computer Conference (CCC) conference.
To read more about Starbug’s finding, please read the article in full on The Hacker News here.
By Swati Khandelwal, Managing Director, The Hacker News | @Swati_THN
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Originally founded in November 2010 by Mohit Kumar, The Hacker News has been internationally recognized as a leading news source dedicated to promoting awareness for security experts and hackers. Supported and endorsed by administrators and members of various underground hacking groups and communities worldwide, The Hacker News (THN) has become a worldwide leader in information security.
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