Smartphones are an integral part of our lives today and we work ourselves into a frenzy to make sure another person doesn’t lay their hands on it. Mobile security has evolved in the past few years from simple pass codes to very complex pattern locks on modern Android smartphones (4×4 and 5×5 pattern lock types are more secure on CyanogenMod). The advent of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich even featured a face recognition unlocking system!
The change in technology takes place at a constant pace. Therefore it isn’t so surprising that Apple came out with biometric sensors on their new flagship iPhone 5S. It wasn’t something new; Motorola had done the same before on their 2011 flagship Atrix but it never kicked off. As flashy as securing your phone with your fingerprint may sound, it has a lot of drawbacks too… The main one being that your fingerprints are all over the place.
Apple have always marketed their technology to be the best and yes, while I do accept that their Retina display is an excellent piece of technology, I beg to differ on their TouchID. The hackers over at Chaos Computer Club have successfully hacked Apple’s TouchID by using everyday household items. Shock you much?
Apple’s new TouchID and how supposedly undefeatable their new technology is, has been surfacing the web since the past few days.
“In reality, Apple’s sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake”, said the hacker with the nickname Starbug, who performed the critical experiments that led to the successful circumvention of the fingerprint locking. “As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints.”
How to Forge A Fingerprint To Break Apple’s TouchID:
Search for a good source of the fingerprint that is stored on the Apple device that you want to hack into. A good place to start off looking for it would be the doorknobs at the home or office of the user. Sprinkle the print with a coloured powder once you have found a suitable source.
Take a photo of the print with a resolution of 2400 dpi.
Invert the image and laser print it onto a transparent sheet and a thick toner setting at 1200 dpi.
Smear the printout with white wood glue or pink latex milk.
After curing, lift the thin latex layer from the sheet and breathe on it to make it moist.
Place the now moist latex layer on the biometric sensor of the iPhone 5S to unlock it.
Voila! There you have an unlocked iPhone 5S secured with Apple’s TouchID.
“We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics. It is plain stupid to use something that you can´t change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token”, said Frank Rieger, spokesperson of the CCC. “The public should no longer be fooled by the biometrics industry with false security claims. Biometrics is fundamentally a technology designed for oppression and control, not for securing everyday device access.”
Pass code security for the iPhone 5S seems more secure than the TouchID. We hope that you don’t secure your precious data with TouchID only to find it breached at some point of time.
Here is a short video demonstrating the hack: Hacking the Apple TouchID
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