News Your fingerprints can be recreated from the sounds made when you swipe on a touchscreen — Researchers new side channel attack can reproduce partial...

[Admin]

Researchers outline the PrintListener side-channel attack, which is claimed to be the first to leverage swiping sounds to infer fingerprint information. They claim they can successfully attack up to 27.9% of partial fingerprints.

Your fingerprints can be recreated from the sounds made when you swipe on a touchscreen — Researchers new side channel attack can reproduce partial... : Read more

 

[TechLurker]

Reads very much like a spy thriller, where they figure out how to duplicate fingerprints to get past a security system. I'm not surprised.

That said, I wonder if this only works on smooth screens, since cracked glass/plastic screens and screen protectors would definitely alter the sound, and the fact that more phone users nowadays don't bother with a protector given steady improvements to screen glass durability.

 

[Notton]

I can't even unlock my own phone when my hands are dry/moist compared to when I enabled the finger print reader.

 

[COBANNVS]

If they go through all that trouble get my fingerprints, they can just have it

 

[Blackink]

I can't even unlock my own phone when my hands are dry/moist compared to when I enabled the finger print reader.

You could use this software then!!

 

[umeng2002_2]

Biometrics are not safe, just convenient.

They also aren't protected by the 5th Amendment. Passwords are.

 

[PEnns]

On a similar subject: Many people, and I'd say 100% of hackers and their researcher friends assume that you can unlock a facial recognition phone easily (say, by knocking out the victims and pointing the phone at their faces)

Except: Some phones (The IPhone for example) requires Attention for Face ID, See picture below.

And furthermore, they expect the person to have their "regular" face on when unlocking the device. This can be easily made almost impossible, if phone owner uses a specific face, a really frowning face for example!

Feel free try it.

 

[palladin9479]

Biometrics are not safe, just convenient.

They also aren't protected by the 5th Amendment. Passwords are.

Yep, biometrics are quite easy to bypass by an active attacker, they really only thwart passive opportunistic attacks like someone's friend, coworker or significant other trying to snoop around an unattended phone. At this point just assume your phone is already 100% compromised and anything on there is available for the entire internet to see.

Privacy is important, it's one of those things that once you give it up, you can never get it back.

 

[geof2001]

Makes me think those bio metric readers that are like sticking your hand in goo that read your whole hand might not be such a far off scifi method of security.

 

[LilSnoozy]

If they go through all that trouble get my fingerprints, they can just have it

I think the problem is that there is no trouble, or that it will be an even simpler process in due time.