Can the iPhone Popularize Fingerprint Readers?

Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple's iPhone 5S features a fingerprint scanner embedded in the home button. Of course, fingerprint-scanning technology isn't new: Bloomberg Terminals feature a built-in fingerprint reader to authenticate users, for example, and various manufacturers have experimented with laptops and smartphones that require a thumb to login. But the technology has thus far failed to become ubiquitous in the consumer realm, and it remains to be seen whether the new iPhone — which is all but guaranteed to sell millions of units — can popularize something that consumers don't seem to want. Security experts seem to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude with regard to Apple's newest trick. 'I'd caution right away, let's see how it tests and what people come up with to break it,' Brent Kennedy, an analyst with the U.S. Computer Emergency and Readiness Team, told Forbes. 'I wouldn't rely on it solely, just as I wouldn't with any new technology right off the bat.' And over at Wired, technologist Bruce Schneier is suggesting that biometric authentication could be hacked like anything else. 'I'm sure that someone with a good enough copy of your fingerprint and some rudimentary materials engineering capability — or maybe just a good enough printer — can authenticate his way into your iPhone,' he wrote. 'But, honestly, if some bad guy has your iPhone and your fingerprint, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about.'"

Comments

Re:Laptop fingerprint fad

[ModernGeek]

I know it isn't always cool to support Apple, but I have to say that there are a lot of things that were just fads before they came in and did it right. Even if they didn't get it right, they normally did something to do it better, or to make it popular.

Look at how many mp3 players there were before the iPod...

Re:if someone has your iPhone.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone 5s doesn't store the fingerprint itself, it just stores specific data points. Apple states that the fingerprint data is stored a secure portion of the A7, and it never uploaded to iCloud, or stored on Apple's servers, and never leaves the iPhone itself.

Also, I'd be very surprised if the stored data isn't hashed.

It does tend to store the fingerprints of everyone who's touched it recently on the surface of the device.

Re: To be honest

[amicusNYCL]

I don't think Apple would make these claims (without anyone asking no less) if they weren't true. If they were storing this data, they would have been quiet about it, don't you think?

No, I don't think so. I don't have any reason to trust Apple, and you shouldn't either. You have to realize that you don't have the whole story when an agency like the NSA refers to Apple as "Big Brother". If the NSA thinks Apple is Big Brother and its customers are zombies, then why would you put any level of trust into Apple to not use your personal data however they please? Both Apple and the NSA know that Apple's customers don't care about things like that, what they care about is owning the newest Apple device, regardless of what that entails. Apple can quietly push out any update they want and people won't care once it leaves the news cycle.