Meet Anil K. Jain and Kai Cao from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University who have come up with a simple and fast method of deceiving the fingerprint security system in phones in 15 minutes.
The duo has stated that this particular attack is far more efficient when compared with Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (C3) approach back when iPhone 5s was launched. Their attempt comprised of a 2.5D printed gummy finger that was made using author’s fingerprint.
The duo’s entire gear for the hack costs under $500. They used a regular inkjet printer along with three AgIC silver conductive ink cartridges, a normal black ink cartridge and special AgIC paper. So how does it work? According to the researchers, you can lift a smartphone’s owner fingerprint even from a stolen phone itself and subsequently scan it at 300 dpi. Afterwards, it is flipped horizontally and then printed on the glossy side of the special AgIC paper.
Then the fingerprint is cut out and placed over the phone’s fingerprint scanning sensor. The phone recognizes it and grants access to the data. This entire process takes about 15 minutes for completion and was successfully tested in a lab on a Samsung Galaxy S6 and Huawei Honor 7.
You can consult the Hacking Mobile Phones Using 2D Printed Fingerprints research paper.
