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According to German researchers, scammers can now replicate your fingerprints using high-quality photos.
The Chaos Computer Club at Chaos Communication Congress (31C3) this weekend presented the method by which the fingerprints are outlined. Jan Krissler well known online as Starbug, outlined the method by which he reproduced the fingerprint of Germany’s Federal Minister of Defense, Ursula von der Leyen.
Starbug captured high-quality snaps of the hand gestures of Ursula at a public presentation from which he carved out the prints.
The copy made by Starbug can be used to access anything protected by her biometric data, BBC said.
Krissler advertised in a statement “After this talk, politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public,”
So if anyone who can replicate the fingerprints of any official can easily break in devices like a smartphone or PC. But it would be problematic if they are used for something like unlocking doors.
Krissler also said in his statement that it would no longer be necessary for the hacker to steal the items touched by that person.
“In the past years, it was successfully demonstrated a number of times how easily fingerprints can be stolen from its owner if a person touched any object with a polished surface (like a glass or a smartphone),” he said.
This is not the first time that the Chaos Computers have targeted the fingerprints. They have unlocked Apple 5S using fake fingerprints just after a week of its release. “This demonstrates—again—that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as [an] access control method and should be avoided,” the group said at the time.
Researchers from Germany’s Security Research Labs (SRLabs) earlier this year revealed “how flaws in the implementation of fingerprint authentication in the Samsung Galaxy S5 expose users’ devices, data, and even bank accounts to thieves and other attackers.”
It did make a concern for other companies who added fingerprint scanners to their Smartphones.
