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This is how Apple does it: The fingerprint sensor is active only when the capacitive steel ring that surrounds the Home button detects the tou
by sildur 7y ago
This is how Apple does it:
The fingerprint sensor is active only when the capacitive steel ring that surrounds the Home button detects the touch of a finger, which triggers the advanced imaging array to scan the finger and send the scan to the Secure Enclave. Communication between the processor and the Touch ID sensor takes place over a serial peripheral interface bus. The processor forwards the data to the Secure Enclave but can’t read it. It’s encrypted and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using a shared key provisioned for each Touch ID sensor and its corresponding Secure Enclave at the factory. The shared key is strong, random, and different for every Touch ID sensor. The session key exchange uses AES key wrapping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption.
The raster scan is temporarily stored in encrypted memory within the Secure Enclave while being vectorized for analysis, and then it’s discarded. The analysis utilizes sub dermal ridge flow angle mapping, which is a lossy process that discards minutia data that would be required to reconstruct the user’s actual fingerprint. The resulting map of nodes is stored without any identity information in an encrypted format that can only be read by the Secure Enclave. This data never leaves the device. It isn’t sent to Apple, nor is it included in device backups.