It may sound like a sci-fi movie, but password fingerprint cloning for your phone and computer can now be defeated by 3-D printing. Now, the good news is that the results show fingerprints are good enough to protect the average person’s privacy if they lose their phone.
However, if you’re likely to be targeted by a well-funded and motivated cyber threat you should not use fingerprint authentication and here is why.
Devices that were bypassed 100% of the time include the AICase padlock, Huawei’s Honor 7x and Samsung’s Note 9 Android phones.
The iPhone 8, MacBook Pro 2018, and the Samsung S10 were bypassed more than 90 % of the time.
Five laptop models running Windows 10 and two USB drives — the Verbatim Fingerprint Secure and the Lexar Jumpdrive F35 — performed the best, with researchers achieving a 0% success rate.
Why Should You Care?
Knowledge is power and it’s good to know since fingerprint authentication is now commonly used on many devices. Companies need to be aware that fingerprint authentication security is not as strong as you think. This means that with the advances of technologies like 3-D printing, it’s now even easier to defeat them.
