11 ms·

All these academic arguments about the security of fingerprints are interesting but completely are detached from the day-to-day use of TouchID. I've been using

• ajross 13y ago
  s/TouchID/Face Unlock/g and back up about 2 years and you can find all the same things said about Ice Cream Sandwich. It's a cute feature. It's not going to change the world, sell another billion phones, push other companies out of the market, or save anyone from serious attacks. It's probably a good idea to enable it anyway.
  • gfodor 13y ago
    I don't think you can call something a cute feature when it's turned on on most phones and is used to unlock them. I would guess that by far the majority of iPhone 5S's have TouchID enabled. I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than 90%. The feature is just that well executed.
    • Kylekramer 13y ago
      I would be very surprised if it is that high now even with the early adopter skew. Reports say that last year it was around a quarter of smartphone users use passcode locks on their work phone (http://www.welivesecurity.com/2012/02/28/sizing-up-the-byod-security-challenge/ http://www.welivesecurity.com/2012/02/28/sizing-up-the-byod-...). I imagine 5S rates are higher than that, but 90% would be insanely impressive. When it comes to computer security, as usual, people's apathy is the biggest problem.
      • 3825 13y ago
        Isn't passcode required to get exchange email on iOS?
        • rossjudson 13y ago
          That's an option set by your IT department. Annoyingly, mine does the same thing. It doesn't have to be that way.
        • cstrat 13y ago
          At my work they have allowed the TouchID to be used with our security policy. I just haven't shelled out the money to buy a new phone.
      • pfranz 13y ago
        I'm sure opt-in/opt-out is a major factor, too. I don't have a 5S, but I'm pretty sure it's opt-out. I think even after upgrading to iOS7 I had to opt-in again to turn on the numerical pass code.
      • gfodor 13y ago
        iOS setup flow basically points the user in the direction of setting it up.
  • ISL 13y ago
    It is more difficult to defeat a touch sensor than face unlock. With face unlock, I just need a photo of the phone's owner. With a fingerprint unlock, I need to go to at least a little trouble to fake the fingerprint.
    • ajross 13y ago
      Depends on scenario. If you steal a phone from a bag on the subway, you'll never be able to get that photo but can probably lift the print right off the phone itself. So maybe iOS has better-yet-still-mediocre protection against snooping yet inferiorly-mediocre guards against identity theft. Yawn. In neither case is the phone meaningfully protected against serious attack. Why must we have this argument? It's a cute feature. Use it.
      • glhaynes 13y ago
        but can probably lift the print right off the phone itself That doesn't seem to be the case to my knowledge. The evidence from the successful attack is that you need an excellent-quality print from one of the specific fingers that has been programmed into the phone. Some phones probably have that on them, but it appears likely that many do not.
        • diminish 13y ago
          there ll be an app for that. edit: build an app, get your colleague, significant other etc touch it on any touchscreen phone or get on camera and create a 3d printed finger. 3d printing vs touchid...maybe
          • roc 13y ago
            I'm pretty sure the GP was talking about the likelihood of a given phone having an appropriate-quality print [1], which does seem low. But putting that aside, your hypothetical app would -- using the demonstrated method -- 'lift' that excellent quality print, scan it at 2400 dpi, (clean up said print), print it on a transparency at 1200 dpi, mask it onto photosensitive PCB, develop/etch/clean the PCB, spray graphite and apply wood glue to the mold. It might make for a slightly-more-plausible-than-normal gadget sequence in a Mission Impossible movie, but it's not much of a concern for the target market. [2] [1] Despite what decades of shows like CSI might lead us to believe, this is not a simple or error-free process. And each mistake irrecoverably destroys the print. [2] Most of that market doesn't even use a passcode today and many that do are still using surprisingly bad PINs (birthdays/anniversaries/1234)
  • Steko 13y ago
    People keep making this analogy but Face Unlock is not being promoted as ever being used for anything but unlocking the phone. Touch ID is the foundation of an entire mobile identity/payment scheme.
  • mikestew 13y ago
    Except TouchID, from what I gather, actually works. Not "works" in the sense of keeping bad people out, but "works" in the sense that when I use it my phone unlocks. I tried face unlock briefly on the Google Nexus I've got and disabled it shortly after when I found that it was unreliable. Poor lighting, too much lighting, a bad hair day, it wasn't even at 80% for successful unlocks.
    • nobodyshere 13y ago
      To be honest, I disabled face unlock the moment my brother unlocked it with his face... Yeah, touch id won't let that happen.
    • foobarbazqux 13y ago
      > Not "works" in the sense of keeping bad people out, but "works" in the sense that when I use it my phone unlocks. I think that's the key distinction here. In any given authentication scheme it's important not to have false positives (incorrectly identifying a bad guy as you) or false negatives (incorrectly identifying you as a bad guy). In this case false positives break security, false negatives break usability. However, false positives won't outright stop adoption whereas false negatives will.
    • diminish 13y ago
      does touchid have the disadvantage of keeping your friends and family unable to use your phone in cases of emergency? 95% of the time, my phone isnt next to adversaries, but trusted parties. a password or code is transferrable, fingerprint isnt. edit; not 911emergency, but casual situations of full or dirty hands..
      • dbags 13y ago
        You can add ten fingers, or you can give them your code, or they can dial 911 with a fully locked phone. So no, it's slightly easier for a relative to use in an emergency than a typical locked phone.
        • hfsktr 13y ago
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • sologoub 13y ago
    TouchID has some tangible implications for markets where some security is needed and convenience is already compromised. For example, my corporate policy disallows pattern lock and requires I use a pin. This is majorly annoying and is enough for me to consider a different device. The big enterprise market is an awesome place to get a foothold in - they are not really price-sensitive and hate change. Not that Apple has any problems in that segment, but extra lock-in doesn't hurt. Where this becomes semi-dangerous is in assuming that now your phone is ironclad and you can store whatever on it totally unprotected. The best route to safety is to make informed decisions based on your own risk-tolerance and not be a lemming.
  • victorf 13y ago
    Certain Japanese cigarette vending machines had photographic age detection algorithms. Japanese children used photos of Bruce Willis to buy cigarettes. Getting a photo of your face would be much simpler than getting your prints.
    • gcr 13y ago
      You touch your iphone's screen to use it, right? Getting a latent print isn't exactly difficult.
      • alwaysinshade 13y ago
        Acquiring a high-DPI scan of a fingerprint from someone's phone, printing it to a sheet of plastic with a high-DPI laser printer, then making a copy of the print out of liquid latex doesn't sound easy unless you're in the business of pentesting. Taking a picture of someone (or lifting it from a social network) to access their device does sound relatively easy. If I was the kind of person who was worried about someone accessing the contents of my phone, I'd simply turn off touch ID and use a long password (or spend less money on a phone that didn't have a feature I wouldn't use). I've gone down the route of using both a long password and touch ID simply because touch ID works so reliably - I've never had to enter my password. That way someone either needs my long password or a physical copy of my fingerprint to access my device. I'd say that's much better than the 4 digit numerical code I relied on previously - which had been seen by friends and family.
        • gcr 13y ago
          See the problem here is that a compromised fingerprint betrays more resources than the system it was meant to protect. Your iPhone has a picture of your fingerprint inside of it now. It's just a picture, and it's likely a very good picture at that. What happens when I swipe your phone for a second or two, plug it into my machine, and download the high-resolution picture of your fingerprint? Do you use a fingerprint lock at home? If so, I've just broken into your home. Do you use a fingerprint lock for the datacenter you administer? I've just gained access. Do you own a registered gun? How'd you like me to commit a murder with your fingerprint on it? This kind of attack is the missing piece of my argument. When someone figures out how to do this, these issues are going to become very important very quickly. Let's suppose that Apple introduces a feature that syncs your fingerprint across many devices. How convenient, right? Let's say that means keeping all of your fingerprints on Apple servers. Let's now suppose that, like a credit card database, an attacker is able to obtain a leaked copy of the fingerprint database of every iPhone user. The recent touchid hack shows that fingerprints can be spoofed for high-end scanners. What then? Sure, this scenario is very unlikely. I'm totally in slippery-slope land here. But when we choose to turn up the dial on convenience to sacrifice more security, we must be prudent, carefully considering the consequences of our intentional ignorance.
• hayksaakian 13y ago
  Please don't delude yourself into thinking this is any safer against the typical kind of smartphone theft. Thieves will offload the phone to someone using software explicitly designed to wipe electronics to be resold. Whether they are wiping an iphone that happens to have touch ID or not is only relevent towards the resale price once it's wiped. Clearly Apple marketing works, as it's somehow convinced a member of (I'd hope) a more technical audience that their electronics are somehow safer against thieves.
  • gfodor 13y ago
    Uh, no. Of course it's doesn't prevent theft. (Though the new 'wipe the phone in 10 tries' thing may deter it, separate from TouchID, I'm not sure.) The point is that with TouchID (as opposed to no passcode) the thief will not be able to send porn to my mom or read my text messages before they wipe the phone.
    • eeeeeeeeeeeee 13y ago
      And with iOS7 they're going to have a harder time wiping it because phones are now locked to your Apple account. So they need your Apple account ID and password to wipe it.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      • marshray 13y ago
        I wonder how much targeted attacks to recover that go for on the black market? Would the phone thief still make a profit?
  • selectodude 13y ago
    An iPhone that is wiped, even in DFU mode, requires the Apple ID and password immediately after it is booted for the first time. Basically, a stolen iPhone is only worth the sum of its parts so they can be used to repair other phones.
• devx 13y ago
  And I think that's the main problem with it. People think that it's actually a true replacement for a password, even though it's not.
  • gfodor 13y ago
    Give me a real world scenario where this distinction matters and affects real outcomes. For real users, not people who are trying to protect themselves from the CIA.
    • marcosdumay 13y ago
      If you use that fingerprint code, any thief that steals your phone and wants your data will have it. It offers no protection at all. Now, if you arguee that no thief will ever want your data (and you'd be probably right), it doesn't matter if you lock your phone or not, and it won't matter how you do that. In this case, locking schemes are completely useless. (Now, I'd be content with a fingerprint reader that recognizes a finger - any finger - and unlocks the phone. It's enough protection if my pocket can't defeat it. Unlocking only by specific fingerprints looks like a pain, nobody else will be able to unlock my phone? Thanks, but I'll pass that.)
    • GuiA 13y ago
      You have your phone in your pocket, I want to access your data. With touch unlock, all I need is my buddy to hold you for 3 seconds while I twist your arm and unlock the phone. With passcode unlock, getting the password out of you will take some more effort. Oh, and in this scenario, I can be a thief, or a police officer, or a borders agent, or an abusive husband, or many other things :)
      • DanBC 13y ago
        > With passcode unlock, getting the password out of you will take some more effort. Given that there are two people, capable of violence, against the phone owner I'm not sure that getting the password is going to be that much trouble.
• rpicard 13y ago
  As a side note, I'd be worried that anyone can wipe my phone if they get their hands on it for a minute.
  • alphakappa 13y ago
    That's a option that you get to disable.
• mortdeus 13y ago
  An ideology of "Its good enough to thwart 99.9% of the population, therefore its good enough for me." is a very harmful ideology to have when it comes to security because you do nothing to deter mass adoption of the insecure technology. While an individual person might not be at that great of risk because the amount of crackers willing to exploit touchID is limited to a minute demographic of people, the real harm comes when many iphone owners who share your ideology start using touchID instead of the more secure locking features their phones provide just because its more convenient. Consider what happens when there are 100,000,000 million insecure phones out in the world. To a motivated cracker/spy/terrorist this is a huge ocean of potential suckers/victims vulnerable to exploitation. While most of these people aren't worth targeting, 1000-10,000 people might be. This is why rejecting broken security technology is a cause everybody should rally behind. Even if you are never a victim of a black hat, you may very well suffer indirect consequences from the exploitation of somebody else.
  • jpttsn 13y ago
    Does this go for the locks on your front door as well? As in "nobody should have front door locks that aren't 100% secure even against eg. terrorists"?
    • andrewflnr 13y ago
      If such a lock existed (it doesn't, AFAIK), I would certainly want it on my door. I would still seriously consider it even if it was dramatically more expensive than a regular lock. Just because there are trade offs in security doesn't mean that anyone should be content with the state of the art and not push for improvements, or push against regressions. I'm not sure myself, but people see TouchID as a regression.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  I think your response raises an issue of perspective. Are we focusing on fingerprint technology from a user's point of view - or are we considering its implications over many years? This reminds me of certain U.S. Supreme Court decisions. As someone who's interested in constitutional law, I often find myself defending things that seem trivial and nitpicky. Why does it matter if the police enter one drug dealer's home without a proper warrant? Who cares if we restrict someone's speech, considering that the person was, say, a racist whose ideas were ignorant and offensive? Of course, the content in this analogy is very different. I'm not comparing fingerprint scanners to crimes. But the logic is very similar: when judging law and technology, respectively, it's important to consider how seemingly small decisions serve as a precedents for bigger trends. If fingerprint scanners become a common replacement for passwords, and the author's argument is correct, the scanners may dramatically change our security and expectations of privacy.
  • twistedpair 13y ago
    Consider the thorny issues of courts forcing people to turn over passwords to decrypt phones to implicate themselves. Typically, it's a constitution tarpit as you should not be forced to implicate yourself. However, your fingerprint is a username in that case because it is all over the place. The police already have it. Don't be fooled, there are certainly kits being sold to law enforcement to dupe TouchID. You're data is less protected from those that you'd probably prefer not have easy access to it now.
    • superuser2 13y ago
      This is a disadvantage only when you are on trial. That's a pretty extreme contingency, and I think most people who aren't internet privacy advocates wouldn't be particularly worried about their phones, of all things, after they've been arrested and indicted. Outside the HN bubble, this is an acceptable tradeoff. People who are concerned can continue to use passwords.
      • ars_technician 13y ago
        >Outside the HN bubble, this is an acceptable tradeoff. I'm glad you have been deemed worthy enough to make that decision for the rest of the population that doesn't understand the implications of what they are getting into.
• xenophanes 13y ago
  > a few attempts to unlock it with a fake fingerprint, and then they'd have to enter my code. And if they fail to enter my code 10 times, the phone is wiped. Are you saying that random people can pick up your phone when you go to the bathroom, touch the home button 3 times, and then enter "1111" 10 times, and wipe your phone? Is there some protection against this?
  • tedunangst 13y ago
    It starts throttling attempts before going full lockdown. But, yeah, don't leave assholes alone with your phone.
    • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      There's some aphorism about "assholes" and children which my brain thinks fits here but that same brain won't recall what it is. Anyhow, my initial thought was, perhaps not an asshole but a child? I could see a child playing with the phone and wiping it in quite short time. But other commenters pointed out it's not the default and there's cloud back-up it doesn't seem a major problem.
      • hexley 13y ago
        The attempts go up quickly. First try, wait a minute. Then 5, then 10, then 30 mins, then an hour, 3 hours, a day, a week etc.
      • jedbrown 13y ago
        My friend's 12-month old baby reset the unlock code on her mother's phone and they ended up having to wipe it completely in order to recover.
        • nnnnni 13y ago
          This is completely unrelated, but why do people say "12 months", "18 months", and "24 months" rather than 1 year, 1.5 years, and 2 years? I don't get it. I'd understand if they're younger than a year old (eg "My son is seven months old!"), but not once the age can be expressed in years.
• titaniu 13y ago
  > And if they fail to enter my code 10 times, the phone is wiped. You must not have kids, because that statement scares the shit out of me.
• cynoclast 13y ago
  This is a good point. But imagine this attitude is adopted and becomes commonplace. People WILL start becoming lax, and people who should not be storing critical information on their phones, or who don't realize that its critical ARE going to lose their phones and they ARE going to get cracked. I guess the question at that point is, is a 4-digit code better or worse? I'm not fielding that one...