“Security consultants have independently confirmed a serious security weakness that makes it trivial for hackers with physical control of many computers sold by Dell, Acer, and at least 14 other manufacturers to quickly recover Windows account passwords,” Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica.

“The vulnerability is contained in multiple versions of fingerprint-reading software known as UPEK Protector Suite. In July, Apple paid $356 million to buy Authentec, the Melbourne, Florida-based company that acquired the technology from privately held UPEK in 2010,” Goodin reports. “The weakness came to light no later than September, but Apple has yet to acknowledge it or warn end users how to work around it. No one has accused Apple of being responsible for the underlying design of fingerprint-reading software.”

Goodin reports, “The UPEK software has long been marketed as a secure means for logging into Windows computers using an owner’s unique fingerprint, instead of a user-memorized password. Last month, Elcomsoft, a Russia-based developer of password-cracking software, warned that the software makes users less secure than they otherwise would be because it stores Windows account passwords to the registry and encrypts them with a key that is easy for hackers to retrieve. It takes only seconds for people with the key to extract a password, company officials said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Windows Registry.