(Newswire.net — December 30, 2014) — For years, high security protocols have been hard to imagine without biometric fingerprint software. There is a variety of devices on the market, such as smart phones, computers, and USB sticks that implement Biometric fingerprint security. However even though this technology is smart, hackers again proved that they are smarter.
Apparently, biometric fingerprinting is much easier to fool than we think. To prove that, a German hacker posted online a fingerprint of German defense minister implying that it would be enough to hack her biometric security.
By using a cheap commercial software and a couple of high resolution photos of one’s hand, Jan Krissler, aka ‘Starbug,’ a hacker from Germany, replicated the fingerprint of German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen’s.
“After this talk, politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public,” Starbug told the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) conference.
From a distance of three meters, Krissler took a photo of Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen’s thumb and added a several other pictures of her thumb taken at different timesinto a program called Verifinger to recreate the print.
With this move, Krissler proved that you don’t need sophisticated ‘007’ gadgets produced by ‘Q’ in his advanced warfare technology laboratory, to hack into devices secured by biometric fingerprint software. Anyone with a camera and laptop could do that within minutes. Well, anyone skilled enough, and ‘Starbug’ is one of the best.
Krissler became famous after he circumvented Apple’s Touch ID, or fingerprint reader, just 48 hours after its release. Reproducing a fingerprint using photos he further exposes the vulnerability of biometrics security measures.
“In the past years, it was successfully demonstrated a number of times how easily fingerprints can be stolen from [their] owner if a person touched any object with a polished surface…With this knowledge there will be no need to steal objects carrying the fingerprints anymore,” CCC convention organizers said on their website.
Experts agree that while mainstream biometrics security measures that rely on static information – such as face recognition or fingerprints – may not seem easy to forge, they can certainly still be faked.