“A prize of more than $13,000 (£8,120) in cash, bitcoins and booze is being offered to the first hacker to crack the fingerprint scanner on Apple’s newly released iPhone 5S,” Katie Collins reports for Wired UK.
“The contest is being run by a micro venture capital firm and a group of security researchers and requires the hacker who wins to the prize to “reliably and repeatedly break into an iPhone 5s by lifting prints (like from a beer mug)”, according the website istouchidhackedyet.com,” Collins reports. “It’s not just for kicks that the hacking of Touch ID is being encouraged. Finding and exposing flaws in new technologies and softwares is vital in order to ensure loopholes can be closed before they can be exploited by anyone with dishonourable intentions. ‘This is to fix a problem before it becomes a problem,’ says Arturas Rosenbacher, founding partner of Chicago’s IO Capital, which donated $10,000 (£6,250) to the hacking contest, speaking to Reuters. ‘This will make things safer.'”
MacDailyNews Note: As per that $10,000, website currently states, “May be fake: refuses to escrow, so consider it high risk.”
Collins reports, “Apple seems pretty sure that Touch ID is secure, but independent research is often the best way to confirm such claims… For now the status on istouchidhackedyet.com remains a bolded “No!”, and it’s still impossible to say whether it will change over time. One thing we can be sure of is that there are plenty of people out there trying their hardest to ensure it does.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
How soon until Apple’s Touch ID comes to iPad and Mac? – September 21, 2013
U.S. Senate Democrat Al Franken demands answers from Apple CEO Tim Cook over iPhone 5s’ Touch ID – September 20, 2013
