Two weeks ago, when we first reported about the iPhone 5S, we talked about the touchprint ID, a feature that Apple hyped as big as the camera for the iPhone v. 2 and Siri for iPhone v. 4. Unfortunately, you can see in the video above that this feature can be hacked.

This video comes to us courtesy of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) which sounds like a pretty smart organization from Germany. Apparently, all you need is a fingerprint of the iPhone user, and photograph it on a glass surface. The photograph is in 2400 dpi resolution, then cleaned up and laser printed with 1200 dpi onto a transparent sheet. Then some pink latex milk or white wood glue is smeared into the pattern by the toner on a transparent sheet.

All you need to do is breath on it to make it a bit moist, and you can touch and open the phone yourself. I have heard that you can fool biometric scanners with a breath, but I saw that trick on the Steve Carrel Get Smart movie.

So, I guess that fingerprint sensor isn’t such a big theft deterrent after all. Should we be surprised by this? I would have to say…no. Then again, we all know that any kind of security can be overcome, otherwise, there would be no crime.

Yeah, biometric security will only go so far.

Source