Toshiba Puts Fingerprint Readers on Cell Phones

An anonymous reader writes "As if it wasn't enough to have fingerprint scanners on laptops, Toshiba has put them on two of its latest smart phones. The Toshiba G500 and G900 feature fingerprint scanners on the back of the handsets, allowing users to access their phone by simply sliding their finger over the scanner. This is supposed to provide a better level of security than using a code of some sort. Of course it also means that someone is more likely to chop your hand off if they desperately want your data."

Comments

Nothing new!

[KNicolson]

My wife's phone from three years ago had one. It also incorporated a dog game/simulator, and one of the ways to make the dog happy was to get your fingerprint swiped in order to pet the dog.

Now, what is new and interesting is the 813SH for Biz which has a remote control data destruct option, or even the slightly older P903i which comes with a wireless DES dongle that locks the phone once it gets out of range.

What happens if the scanner breaks?

[antifoidulus]

I asked this at a research conference once(it was about mobile phone security as well) and the researcher, who had drawn out all these equations showing how wonderful the fingerprint security was couldn't answer me. For a device like a mobile phone that tends to get tossed around and abused a lot, I wouldn't imagine that the scanner breaking would be all that rare of an occurence. However, the researcher just said that if the fingerprint scanning device was broken, then you could use a password instead, of course this was after he spent the first 5 minutes of his presentation telling us how passwords were insecure. Assuming that passwords are insecure, wouldn't the first thing an attacker does when getting the phone be to smash the fingerprint scanner? Then what was the point?