3 ms·

I have discovered to my surprise, since shattering my iPhone 6 screen last week, that Touch ID works perfectly well through multiple layers of Saran Wrap. So yo

I have discovered to my surprise, since shattering my iPhone 6 screen last week, that Touch ID works perfectly well through multiple layers of Saran Wrap. So you could keep your thumb wrapped up if you’re concerned about leaving prints. ;-) In the meantime, my iPhone X arrives on Thursday, and I’m looking forward to training Face ID. All I got from this article was “these are the lengths you have to go to to defeat it”, which seems pretty darn good for my purposes.

mikeash 9y ago
Funny idea. My takeaway from the article was similar. Touch ID was already Good Enough for me, and it sounds like Face ID is quite a bit better. Which is, oddly enough, exactly what I expected. One thing I'd really be interested in learning about is how much time and how many attempts it took them before they could successfully unlock the phone. And more pertinently, what those values might look like once they get some more experience with it. In a real-world scenario, they only get 48 hours and 5 attempts, so any technique which takes more than that is still nonviable. It will also be interesting to see if Apple is able to improve their defenses against this. I get the sense that they couldn't improve Touch ID much because a good fake fingerprint looks just like a real one to the sensor. This mask definitely does not look much like the person's actual face, so they may be able to tweak things to be more resistant to this attack. Which is not to say that this attack is pointless or these guys are dumb or anything. I'm impressed with their work! It's just not a game over situation the way they make it sound in certain parts of their writeup.