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It's not like a scanner that's taking a picture of a finger and storing the image on a chip. From what I can tell, the biometric markers of individual fingerpri
by gdubs 13y ago
It's not like a scanner that's taking a picture of a finger and storing the image on a chip. From what I can tell, the biometric markers of individual fingerprints are used as a hash to generate a strong password -- much stronger than a user generated password. The fact is, the standard 4 digit pins that most users use are not very secure. (From what I can recall of a recent security seminar I attended.)
Given the privacy concerns that have been news lately, it's understandable that this would raise some eyebrows, but when combined with something like the iCloud keychain for generating strong online passwords, this could actually be a great benefit to individual privacy.
- eksith 13y agoIt's possible the device is storing a second key of some sort as well as regenerate each time a fingerprint is set. It may even regenerate it each time a scan is done and reset the password. I.E. hash( hash(fingerprint) + stored key ) = actual password.
- joshstrange 13y agoIIRC I think I saw someone else saying that each fingerprint hash was hashed with a key specific to each phone so that if you were able to extract the fingerprint hash it would be unusable on the target's other devices. I cannot find the source for this so please take this with a large grain of salt.