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No, the fingerprints are not hacked. The MacBook Pro scanner is. Fingerprints and biometrics in general are not a secret. Consider your fingerprint like your f

by GuB-42 5y ago

No, the fingerprints are not hacked. The MacBook Pro scanner is. Fingerprints and biometrics in general are not a secret. Consider your fingerprint like your face. Anyone can reproduce your face, there are cameras everywhere, and it is probably already easy to find on the internet. "Hacking" your face by taking a picture is the most boring "hack" ever. Now, if I print your face on a piece of paper, wear it as a mask and try to say to a security guard that I am you, normally, he won't let me in. If he does, the problem is not that I managed to make a paper mask with a picture of you, this will always be possible, the problem is that your guard is stupid and you need a better one. And if your fingerprint scanner can be fooled by a dab of glue and a laser printer, you probably need a better scanner, something that Apple should be able to do. Smartphone manufacturers like Apple are usually good at bringing fancy tech to the masses, and they could work on defeating these old attacks.

CountDrewku 5y ago
Eh... fingerprints are quite a bit simpler than faces. They're just patterns. I don't know how you could detect a fake fingerprint. You'd need something that could tell there wasn't real skin on the device. I would say warmth but obviously he has the fake skin over his actual thumb so it's probably still warm.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Yes, I really meant fake fingers, not just fake fingerprints. And there is plenty of research on that subject. Possible ways of detecting a fake fingerprint (beside warmth): - Blood (we could use one of these cheap SpO2 sensors) - Capacitance - Perspiration and related skin resistance - Microscopic skin details And the usual machine learning solution of feeding thousands of real and fake fingerprints to a neural network and letting it decide. As all living things, fingers are far from simple, there are plenty of details beyond the obvious pattern. It is a bit like a banknote, you can photocopy a banknote and it is very east to identify the banknote you copied. But it is very hard to pass it off as a real one to someone who knows where to look.

by GuB-42 5y ago

CountDrewku 5y ago

Eh... fingerprints are quite a bit simpler than faces. They're just patterns. I don't know how you could detect a fake fingerprint. You'd need something that could tell there wasn't real skin on the device. I would say warmth but obviously he has the fake skin over his actual thumb so it's probably still warm.

GuB-42 5y ago
Yes, I really meant fake fingers, not just fake fingerprints. And there is plenty of research on that subject. Possible ways of detecting a fake fingerprint (beside warmth): - Blood (we could use one of these cheap SpO2 sensors) - Capacitance - Perspiration and related skin resistance - Microscopic skin details And the usual machine learning solution of feeding thousands of real and fake fingerprints to a neural network and letting it decide. As all living things, fingers are far from simple, there are plenty of details beyond the obvious pattern. It is a bit like a banknote, you can photocopy a banknote and it is very east to identify the banknote you copied. But it is very hard to pass it off as a real one to someone who knows where to look.