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Hackers unlock any smartphone using photographed fingerprints in just 20 minutes

Jesus Diaz for Tom’s Guide:

Hackers working for Chinese security company Tencent claim that they have developed a method to photograph a fingerprint on any glass surface and use it to unlock any smartphone, no matter their fingerprint reader technology — in just 20 minutes…

Each of those phones used one of the three existing fingerprint scanning technologies: capacitive, optical. and ultrasonic, like the one in the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Talking to the media after the demonstration, [X-Lab’s leader Chen] Yu said that the hardware they used to clone the fingerprint only costs about $140. Yu believes that the only defense against this is to clean everything you touch, including all of your phone.

In other words: fingerprint security sucks.

MacDailyNews Take: Hackers unlock any smartphone using photographed fingerprints in just 20 minutes? Not our iPhones (or iPad Pros), they don’t! 🙂

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]

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