Crowdfunded Bounty For Hacking iPhone 5S Fingerprint Authentication

judgecorp writes "There's more than $13,000 pledged for a crowdfunded bounty for bypassing an iPhone 5S's fingerprint reader. The bounty, set up by a security expert and an exploit reseller, requires entrants to lift prints 'like from a beer mug.' It has a website — IsTouchIDHackedYet — and payments are pledged by tweets using #IsTouchIDHackedYet. One drawback: the scheme appears to rely on trust that sponsors will actually pay up." Other prizes include whiskey, books, and a bottle of wine.

Comments

Re:Why bother.

[alen]

if you live close to a wal mart chances are your victim will have a gun and can defend him or herself

Re:'like from a beer mug'

[De Lemming]

As was explained in the Apple keynote, a capacitive (not optical) sensor is used, which scans sub-epidermal skin layers. So lifting a fingerprint will not work.

Here is an extensive explanation of the technologies used.

Re:You can just enter the passcode.

[maccodemonkey]

Didn't these clowns watch the keynote?

-jcr

I am totally shocked someone in the tech industry would launch a project without fully understanding the original problem. SHOCKED I SAY.

Re:'like from a beer mug'

[chihowa]

That's not an extensive explanation of how the technology works. The only description of how the sensor works from that article is this:

A capacitance fingerprint reader leverages a handy property of your skin: The outer layer of your skin (your dermis), where your fingerprint is, is non-conductive, while the subdermal layer behind it is conductive. When you touch the iPhone’s fingerprint sensor, it measures the minuscule differences in conductivity caused by the raised parts of your fingerprint, and it uses those measurements to form an image..

So it's still measuring your fingerprint as made up of ridges and troughs, just using conduction instead of optics. So you lift a fingerprint from a glass, etch it onto a conductive substrate (that matches the dermis roughly) and put it on the sensor.

The sensor is likely looking at a fairly wide range of relative conduction between the ridges and troughs, so that it will work if your fingers are oily or sweaty or cold, so you wouldn't need to perfectly match the conduction of the user's actual finger.

Re:Why bother.

[hondo77]

What part of "Designed by Apple in California" don't you understand? :-)

Re:Why bother.

[i_ate_god]

Walmarts exist in Canada too

But then again you wouldn't expect a Canadian to do such a brazen hack. Rather the Canadian would ask the other Canadian politely if they could use their phone, then quickly hop on their moose and ride off with it.