A Hacker Reveals How Your Fingerprint Could Be Easier To Hack Than A Traditional Password
Flickr/Karlis DambransA hacker has found a way to hack fingerprint passwords - and it's as easy as taking a clear picture of someone's hands.
At the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club conference in Hamburg, Germany, Popular Science reports a hacker named Jan "Starbug" Krissler pointed out the flaws in biometric password technology, like the fingerprint sensor found on an iPhone 6.
Krissler said pictures of people's hands and fingers can be used to recreate a person's fingerprint, which can be used to hack into any of their devices that require fingerprint password entry.
The hacker used pictures of German Defense Minister Ursula Gertrud Von der Leyen, which were taken from about 10 feet away with a standard camera. With the help of VeriFinger, which is used to make fingerprint-identifying hardware, Krissler was able to re-create Von der Leyen's fingerprint.
However, as Popular Science points out, there's no need to freak out about your iPhone's fingerprint password getting hacked. This is less likely to happen to a normal person, as opposed to someone high-profile, who is in the public eye and is often being photographed.
And there's no real evidence Krissler was able to test his experiment to see how it matched up with Von der Leyen's own fingerprint - you'd need to have the victim's smartphone to make it work.
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