iPhone 6 Touch ID Still Fooled By Fake Fingerprints

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced this week that it had sold more than 10 million examples of its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones over the course of the release weekend.

Those 10 million new owners might well be interested in what Rogers, who works for security vendor Lookout Technology, has to say about the vulnerabilities of the Touch ID system

iPhone 6 Touch ID: Fake fingerprints

Upon the release of the iPhone 5, Rogers showed that a dedicated criminal could lift a fingerprint from the phone and use a material such as Elmer’s glue to create a fake print which would enable access to the phone.

He has now claimed that little improvement has been made in the newly released phones, claiming that “fake fingerprints created using my previous technique were able to readily fool both devices.”

It must be noted that he concluded that improvements had in fact been made, including fewer reported rejections of his real fingerprint, and a wider scanning area on the new model.

Despite the headline grabbing fact that fake fingerprints can still allow thieves to break into the iPhone 6, Rogers concludes that Touch ID is an effective security measure. The process of creating a fake print is tricky, and Apple only allows a limited number of attempts to access the phone.

Trickier tests ahead

With the advent of the Apple Pay payment solution, users might begin to ask more demanding questions of the Touch ID system. Apple Pay will use the Touch ID sensor to access a credit card account stored on the phone and initiate a payment.

Rogers fears that should Apple Pay become popular, the greater incentive to steal an iPhone will encourage thieves to exploit the security weaknesses that he has exposed.

Apple is not the only company suffering from weaknesses in its security measures. PC World has noted that Samsung is one of a number of rival brands experiencing similar difficulties.

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