That Fingerprint Sensor on Your Phone Is Not as Safe as You Think

New findings published Monday by researchers at New York University and Michigan State University suggest that smartphones can easily be fooled by fake fingerprints digitally composed of many common features found in human prints. In computer simulations, the researchers from the universities were able to develop a set of artificial “MasterPrints” that could match real prints similar to those used by phones as much as 65 percent of the time. … “It’s as if you have 30 passwords and the attacker only has to match one,” said Nasir Memon…