iPhone 5S Touch ID scanner hacked just days after release
It’s only been on sale for three days, but the Apple iPhone 5S’s headlining security feature, the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, has already been hacked.
It took just a weekend for German security group Chaos Computer Club (CCC) to break the new Apple security measure.
“A fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, was enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5s secured with Touch ID,” the group wrote on their blog.
It wasn’t exactly a straightforward process though. Anyone trying to replicate the group’s process would first have to find a full and clean fingerprint belonging to the iPhone’s owner, then photograph it at 2,400 dpi resolution. After that, the image would then need to be inverted and laser printed on a transparent sheet in 1,200 dpi using a thick toner setting. Next, the would-be hacker would have to use latex milk or white wood-glue to create a mould, spreading it onto the transparent sheet, breathing onto the mould to add moisture before pulling off the completed fake fingerprint.
It’s all a bit like something out Mission Impossible, but according to the CCC, it was a relatively easy process to pull, especially considering the potential criminal rewards that could be acquired by hacking an iPhone 5S.
“We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics,” said Chaos Computer Club’s Frank Rieger.
“It is plain stupid to use something that you can´t change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token,”
Scroll down to check out the hack being carried out.
