In an era when emerging authentication technologies like iris scan face scan are ruling over the market, is fingerprint still a good choice. Well, a gigantic portion of mobile devices, government offices, private offices, identification documents use fingerprint scan as a method to recognize a person. Since fingerprints of every human being are unique, this method has been used in vast fields covering from high confidential authentication systems to crime detection. But now the question arises, if this method is still safe?
The answer will be self explanatory if you watch this video by The Verge. The tech news channel showed how minutes is enough to fake a fingerprint of a person and use it for unfair means. They tried an experiment twice on two high end high secured devices, once on the iPhone 6 and the other one on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. The trial was carried out by biometrics firm Vkansee when some dental mold was used to take a cast, followed by application of play-dough to fill it. This is the major process and the remaining steps are trial and error method to match the play-dough on the fingerprint reader.
It was found that a person whose fingerprint was smooth could not be replicated and hence unlocking the phone wasn’t possible. On the other hand, the Verge’s director Phil Esposito go his thumb impression faked completely. Once thing was clear from this experiment. This method of vulnerability is possible only when the impersonator is in proximity to the victim. This means the perpetrator has to make the victim somehow provide his fingerprint on the mold. This is definitely a tough job but not an impossible one. Another information that can be extracted is that the fingerprint matching is a time consuming one as it needs trial and error method. Some phone locks after few wrong attempts.
Check pout the video by The Verge for more details:
