Can the iPhone Popularize Fingerprint Readers? 356
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.'"
i can always wipe my phone remotely (Score:4)
very easy to remote wipe iphones
but if you have some super secret corporate info on your iphone you should be relying on a lot more than a consumer level fingerprint scanner for security
Re:i can always wipe my phone remotely (Score:5, Insightful)
if you have some super secret corporate info on your iphone you should be relying on a lot more than a consumer level fingerprint scanner for security
Especially when it's on a glass device that's covered with your fingerprints....
Re: (Score:3)
Different kind of fingerprint. It doesn't help that the same word refers to closely related things.
1. fingerprint: an impression left by a finger providing a (typically smudged) two-dimensional image of the pattern of ridges on the skin of a finger.
2. fingerprint: the pattern of ridges on the skin of a finger.
To further complicate things there are different kinds of fingerprint "readers"
1. fingerprint reader: device to create an optical image (or hash from such) of a finger. Some are enhanced to require war
Re: (Score:2)
If it has network connectivity sure. If your phone is stolen and removed from any networks you could potentially break into the phone and have an unlimited amount of time to access the data. The best security feature Apple had on the ipad was delays between incorrect login attempts leading to eventual wiping of the data. I wonder if an incorrect finger scan will result in the same delay and wipe or if it's disabled in case of accidental miss entries.
I'm curious to see if someone can easily circumvent the
if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
that's extraordinarily true, considering how smudgy and oily my phone gets (i have a glandular thing)
Re:if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:4)
Try wiping your hands between eating a donut and using your phone.
Take it easy, just kidding...
Re: (Score:2)
Try wiping your hands between eating a donut and using your phone.
Take it easy, just kidding...
That's why god gave me two hands
Re:if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Try wiping your hands between eating a donut and using your phone.
His glands make him eat donuts?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Never heard of frat indoctrination stories, have you...
Re: (Score:3)
Can't
Re:if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:if someone has your iPhone..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Why saphire (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple used a saphire cover for the lens cover. Why? One possibility was they needed a material that is transparent in the IR to do the sub dermal imaging. But there's other choices. Another possibility is that it's just cool. But what I'm thinking is that perhaps this cannot tolerate too much scratching so they had to use something super hard. I suppose there's also the requirement for mechanical stresses. I don't know. But if it's scratching I wonder if this will be robust.
In any case getting back to the post I'm replying to. there's no reason to store the finger print, just a hash of it, as is done for passwords. You would not want to hash the image of it either. You would want to distill it down to a set of rotationally and translationally invariant feature vectors. Of course that's still an ID of you from your fingerprint, but given the features they could not recreate your fingerprint itself.
Personally I'm very excited about this because I'm very concerned about my phone being the worlds worst 2 -factor identification. Since passwords resets from nearly all websites are sent to the address that you get all your other correspondence from them you have to use the same e-mail address for both. Your phone knows this address since you have to be able to get your e-mail. And if you also use your phone for a 2nd factor, then that doesn't really help. Anyone with your phone can just request a password reset and then they have your password and the 2nd factor. By by pay pal and google pay and your bank accounts.
So if the phone is to be that important having a biometric filter running transparently, regardless of whether it is 100%, is really welcome.
Re: (Score:3)
What.. It's a legitimate question.. When I hear secure and iPhone (or any other phone) in the same sentence I have to laugh..
Why would that be? Use an eight letter passcode, and nobody can unlock it and access the data on it. I mean _nobody_.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm gonna strike it rich (Score:2)
I want to be the first to show how you can use the same old fingerprint reader defeating techniques on an iPhone. Internet fame, security researcher fortune, all will be mine! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Re:I'm gonna strike it rich (Score:5, Funny)
I want to be the first to show how you can use the same old fingerprint reader defeating techniques on an iPhone.
Better make sure there's not already a patent on that
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Didn't think so.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if it could still be fooled with a 2D printout of a scan from a similar sensor? It's not a stereoscopic sensor is it?
iPhone + fingerprint? (Score:4, Funny)
"But, honestly, if some bad guy has your iPhone and your fingerprint, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about."
Surely if they have your iPhone, they already have lots of copies of you fingerprints smeared all over it?
Re:iPhone + fingerprint? (Score:5, Informative)
"But, honestly, if some bad guy has your iPhone and your fingerprint, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about."
Surely if they have your iPhone, they already have lots of copies of you fingerprints smeared all over it?
This technology doesn't use a fingerprint, it actually reads living tissue under the skin. The technology seems very similar because of how you use it (put your thumb here), however it is drastically different.
So no, your fingerprints on the screen won't work. They don't match the living tissue this reads.
Re: (Score:3)
It isn't hard to find, but here's a citation: http://www.macworld.com/article/2048514/the-iphone-5s-fingerprint-reader-what-you-need-to-know.html [macworld.com]
Re: (Score:2)
"smeared all over" is probably the problem there – at least with my touchscreens, I tend to leave inch-long smears that, while annoyingly visible, hardly leave anything that can be considered a proper fingerprint. Put it into a pocket and all you have is a thin film of whatever. Good if you need DNA, less if you want a fingerprint you can actually copy.
Will be interesting to see just hard fingerprint recovery will be for real-life scenarios.
Take some fine powder and sprinkle it over a cell phone screen and back. You'll get a fingerprint or two. Remember, the nice, nonporous rest of the phone is a perfect place to pick up a print.
Re: (Score:3)
Laptop fingerprint fad (Score:2)
Re:Laptop fingerprint fad (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at how many mp3 players there were before the iPod...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Lots... Creative and Rio had lineups of MP3 players in the late 90's that were being sold in stores. The iPod wasn't released until 2001. A better question is when did MP3 players go mainstream? Then we get into the chicken and the egg discussion. Did Apple ride the MP3 wave that was already building or was it the "cool" factor of iPods that made MP3 players mainstream? Personally, I think that MP3 players would have gone mainstream without Apple, but Apple did have impeccable timing.
Re: (Score:2)
yes, lots of these things are released, don't work right or the way people expect them to and then go away for a few years until some company puts in the work to make it work
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Have you tried a different finger? I often use a different finger when I get pissed off.
Simple hack - use a 3D printer (Score:2)
It seems this would be a simple job for a 3D printer -- 1) get the person's fingerprint; 2) print it out as a 3D object; 3) ??? 4) profit!!
Re: (Score:2)
It seems this would be a simple job for a 3D printer -- 1) get the person's fingerprint; 2) print it out as a 3D object; 3) ??? 4) profit!!
Except that wouldn't work because 1) 3D printers don't have sufficient resolution; 2) Most modern fingerprint scanners look for a pulse.
Re:Simple hack - use a 3D printer (Score:4, Informative)
And fingerprint scanners that check for a pulse are unbeatable, right? What say you, Adam and Jaimie?
Mythbusters: Busted!
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/fingerprint-scanners-unbeatable.htm
Not so fast... (Score:5, Informative)
The fingerprint reader in the iPhone 5s uses a capacitive sensor, not an optical one, so Schneier's proposed hack wouldn't work.
Also, Apple requires you to create a PIN code when you enable the fingerprint sensor. If it's been 48 hours since you used the fingerprint sensor to authenticate, you have to use the PIN instead. Likewise, if you've just restarted the iPhone, you have to use the PIN for your first authentication, you can't use the fingerprint sensor.
Re:Not so fast... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's really the point of the fingerprint sensor. Because if you look at statistics, most users do not use a PIN or other locking mechanism on their phone. They use the default keylock. That's it. No PIN, no swipe, no face recognition, no password (both iOS and Android support "complex" authentication that goes beyond a PIN). And it's understandable because a user interacts with their phone hundreds of times a day and it gets old quick.
So basically to amp up security, the 5S lets you replace the PIN with a fingerprint, because it's better if most users enable a PIN than half of them (or less!) do. Hell, I might want to use a complex password if it means I don't have to enter it every 5 minutes because I look something up, then re-lock the phone only to need it a few minutes later to look up something else (or answer a phone call, or text, or whatever).
And yes, until it broke, I loved the fingerprint sensor on my laptop.
Re:Not so fast... (Score:4, Informative)
Capacitive sensors can be hacked if you just have heat and a tiny bit of moisture. AKA, wax fingerprint copy, and you just lick it once.
Yes, but not this one. This doesn't read your fingerprint, but rather tissue underneath the skin. Your wax copy of the outer skin won't work.
But, honestly... (Score:2)
Now, everyone calm down and go back to reading peaceful stories about how the NSA has hacked all internet cryptography.
"sub-epidermal skin layers" (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll have to wait to find out exactly what they're referring to, but if implemented well this should be resistant to fingerprint lifting. Only the outer layers of your finger's skin touch objects. You'd have to have somebody else touch a sensor like this one and then try to recreate the capacitive map.
Re: (Score:2)
We'll have to wait to find out exactly what they're referring to, but if implemented well this should be resistant to fingerprint lifting. Only the outer layers of your finger's skin touch objects. You'd have to have somebody else touch a sensor like this one and then try to recreate the capacitive map.
You are correct, this is immune to fingerprint lifting. "Sub-epidermal skin layers" means it reads living tissue under the skin.
Re: (Score:2)
It won't make a difference. It's reading your fingerprints, and your fingerprints aren't that clear to start with so it can't be too picky about correspondence. You're talking about microscopic differences on the matter but your fingerprints are huge structures relatively speaking and also the only reliably unique structure to look at there.
I mean I guess it defeats casual snooping, but so does my Android phone's pattern lock.
Re: (Score:2)
We'll have to wait to find out exactly what they're referring to, but if implemented well this should be resistant to current methods of fingerprint lifting.
FTFY; just give it time.
Didn't work with the Thinkpad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The fingerprint readers in laptops work rather differently... and poorly. They're optical readers, and they work more like scanners in that they just capture a strip, and you have to swipe your finger over it. Having experienced fingerprint readers on a few different laptops, they don't work well (they're finicky and rarely want to read your fingers unless you swipe them just right).
Apple's approach is for a 2D sensor that doesn't use swiping. From the videos they've posted, it also seems to be much more wi
Can we kill these fingerprint rumors? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
By "reading livinng tissue under the skin" this means what exactly, reading the capacitance of a substance to see where the ridges are? In that case, the hack proposed works if you choose the right material to create a relief with.
Wrong Question (Score:4, Insightful)
"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."
This is not how Apple thinks of design. Instead of asking people "Do you want a fingerprint scanner?" the question they ask themselves is "How do we make security easier if not completely transparent to the end user?" If you asked people if they wanted to be secure without having to do anything at all, your answer would be different. The fingerprint scanner just happens to be the right solution to the problem (in Apple's opinion).
Re: (Score:3)
Fingerprints? I don't think so (Score:4, Funny)
Best Animaniacs adult humour: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xmAC9Qu908
Progress! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now people can access you iPhone when you are unconscious or dead.
Unconscious? Yes. Dead? No. This reads living tissue under the skin. Can we stop with the "chopping off your hand" junk now?
Re: (Score:2)
So, when a person becomes deceased (or an appendage is removed), every single cell in their body dies instantaneously?
if (substr(Headline,-1) eq '?') (Score:2)
Misunderstood (Score:2)
No authentication system is perfect. On non-iThingies you have three choices: swipe to unlock, 4 digit PIN, or full encryption with a long password. Most people use option 1 or 2. Option 1 provides no security whatsoever. Option 2 provides a little security but it's very easy to crack a 4 digit password. Option 3 is much better but inconvenient. I tried it for a while and got tired of entering a long password every time I wanted to use the phone. So I got rid of it.
Basically any OS is hackable, given enough
if it works better (Score:2)
The problem with my laptop fingerprint scanner is I have to swipe like 16 times before it recognizes anything, so its just faster and easier to typing in my password.
However for phones and tablets, the Achilles heal of all touch devices is the on screen keyboard, so if your password involves characters, numbers and symbols is it freaking annoying. A fingerprint scanner would be welcome.
But, if Apple's fingerprint scanner is not 100% flawless and quick every time, then it will fail just like every other fin
How many people use a passcode on their iPhones? (Score:3)
Families? (Score:4, Interesting)
Same old idiocy. (Score:3)
The iPhone will popularize fingerprint readers because companies are run by idiots incapable of thinking for themselves. No one brought this up when Motorola and LG both brought the functionality to their phones, or when a multitude of other companies started sticking it on their laptops. The difference here is that Apple didn't allow engineers and accountants to compromise aesthetics by plopping down whatever suppliers had available wherever it fit on the device. That's an important detail and a key to Apple's continued success, but it doesn't make the technology better than prior implementations.
Interestingly, I've already seen a number of usability flaws with Apple's implementation in demo videos. First, there's a momentary delay which I assume is by design so that the scanner isn't responding to every minor touch. People don't like waiting, they'd rather be engaged doing something than waiting even when the delay is short. Second, most people seem to mistakenly keep the home button press resulting in the phone loading Siri or whatever the instant the phone unlocks. I suppose they could patch the OS to not react to the initial press, but now we're just adding complication. Undoubtedly there's an exploitable fail safe in place because there must be a way to unlock or reset this in the event that something happens to the phone, the sensor or the owner.
What I'm really curious to know is what Apple is going to take credit for next year. Last year Apple somehow got a patent for facial recognition unlock, something that's been present on Android for several years.
Re: (Score:2)
plus 1 accuracy
Re:NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
And now the NSA will have a finger print database for all iphone users with minimum effort.
Stop this. Stop it this very instant. The NSA (or any other nefarious creature / corporation / government entity / evil deity) is not interested in a user's fingerprint.
First, as has been mentioned ad nauseaum, you don't get a fingerprint - you get a hash of an output off a sensor that relates to a fingerprint.
Second, even if you could reconstruct the loops and whorls of the fingerprint then so what? You leave a veritable trail of fingerprints (and DNA and a host of other things we don't want to talk about here) everywhere you haul your ugly bit of meatspace around to. Nobody cares about a single fingerprint. The only valid concern is whether or not someone can take an existing copy of your fingerprint and gain access to the device. We shall see.
IF it works (big if) then it's a fine bit of biometrics to allow you to play Angry Birds. If you are carrying more sensitive information on your iPhone and you don't have it encrypted separately from phone access, sucks to be you.
Not every bit of security has to be able to foil three letter government agencies.
Re:NSA (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you think so? Having a quick and easy way of remotely obtaining the unique hash of the fingerprint of any iPhone user could become very useful for the NSA and other agencies - law enforcement in particular. Say you lift off a fingerprint from some object and want to know whom it belongs to. You compute a hash by the same method as in the iPhone and obtain cell phone data of people who were in the vicinity of the crime scene (that's probably standard procedure by now anyway). Now wouldn't it be nice if you could quickly match your hash with those of the phone owners? The more phones have fingerprint readers, the more obviously useful would it be to have a database of fingerprint hashes or access them remotely on the phones.
Re: (Score:2)
You leave a veritable trail of fingerprints (and DNA and a host of other things we don't want to talk about here) everywhere
Yes but it's very expensive and time consuming to get DNA/Fingerprints/etc that you can reliably tie to an individual unless they can be persuaded to volunteer.
Nobody cares about a single fingerprint
The UK police have been testing a roadside fingerprint scanner which works of a single print (it's not as accurate as a full all finger scan) so a single print is certainly of interest to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Harder to get?
How about I beat your finger with a hammer until you give me your password?
Not that much harder.
Re: (Score:3)
Harder to get?
How about I beat your finger with a hammer until you give me your password?
Not that much harder.
A violent assault sure seems a hell of a lot harder to me than simply following someone around and wait until they touch something you can pull a print from without the person even realizing it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Gee, now we have a nice fingerprint to user database.. and Apple didn't even have to try this time!
Re:To be honest (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it should come in handy when the Feds are investigating "terrorists."
Re:To be honest (Score:5, Informative)
That was actually one of my first thoughts when I heard they were adding this, but I watched the keynote address, and Apple made it clear during the initial announcement that they're not uploading any fingerprint data to their servers. They further clarified afterwards that they aren't even storing the fingerprints on the local device at all. Just as good practice dictates that you store a hash of the user's password rather than the password itself, Apple is doing the same here with the fingerprint data. They store a local hash of the fingerprint rather than the fingerprint itself, then simply verify against the hash when authenticating the user.
Which isn't to say that they couldn't backdoor something in later and renege on what they've said if some secret court order came down that gagged them and compelled them to collect the data, but at least they had the decency to try and secure the data properly.
Re:To be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they did *claim* that.
Re: To be honest (Score:4, Insightful)
People will absolutely find out if their prints are indeed uploaded or stored on their device. Apple knows this, they've learned it the hard way when someone found out about the storing of geo-data and made an app to show the travel log of any iPhone user a few years ago.
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?
Re: To be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
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" [iclarified.com]. 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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
So it's not about Apple - any vendor has the potential be compelled by NSA. What's the alternative? Shall we all move back to the caves?
If the problem is the NSA, then the solution should be obvious.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are aware that they used Apple in the presentation because at that time nobody used Android?
Are you suggesting that the NSA would equate Android with Big Brother and describe Android customers as "zombies"? They specifically referred to Apple's 1984 ad campaign, and suggested that it is ironic that Apple has become big brother, and the mindless zombies in their ad are actually their customers. I don't think that description applies to Android.
Are you suggesting that their description of Apple does not apply today? Apple hasn't relinquished any of their control, and people will line up in front
Re: To be honest (Score:4)
People will absolutely find out if their prints are indeed uploaded or stored on their device. Apple knows this, they've learned it the hard way when someone found out about the storing of geo-data and made an app to show the travel log of any iPhone user a few years ago.
Did anything change as a result? Did iPhone users suddenly wake up and not use their iPhones? Or switch to Android (ha ha, same privacy concerns, different companies)?
They got caught, took a few licks from the press, but ultimately the future refused to change.
Re: To be honest (Score:4, Informative)
Apple changed the way this data was stored, only stored current information (instead of a complete history), made it possible to encrypt the data and also added an option to disable it altogether. So yeah, a lot did change after this was exposed.
Re: To be honest (Score:5, Informative)
Did anything change as a result?
Yes.
Just to refresh everyone's memory, the issue was one with the geodata cache being kept on iOS devices. The cache was in place to allow the device to more quickly determine its location by recognizing hotspots and cell towers that it had previously seen, rather than having to engage in a battery-draining GPS check. Due to not thinking through things as much as they should have, Apple designed the cache to clear out old data only when the cache exceeded a certain size (IIRC it was 2MB), but the result was that it could potentially have a few years' worth of geodata cached away that a malicious person could use.
Apple modified the cache's behavior in response to the incident, changing it to delete items after a few months (I believe 3).
Re:To be honest (Score:4, Interesting)
Calculate invarient properties of the image and hash those. This is not new technology it has been around for many decades.
Re: (Score:3)
They don't need to store it on their servers when they essentially have direct access to your phone.
I don't get what you mean. I mean, yes, they obviously have direct access to the phone, but I'm unclear what statement of mine you're trying to contradict and in what way. As I said, if they want to change the way it works later, then clearly they can do so, but the fact that they're not storing our fingerprints from the get-go means that they would need to add that functionality later, rather than merely needing to hand over a copy of their database in response to a government request.
How does that work with analog data like a fingerprint image? You can have 2 images that show the same fingerprint but slightly differently and have completely different hashes, don't they need to use image recognition algorithms to compare fingerprints? Wouldn't that require storing the image or some representation of it?
As someone else alrea
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it should come in handy when the Feds are investigating "terrorists."
It's abut time anyone not buying an iPhone to be considered a terrorist.
Re: (Score:3)
Most consumer-grade readers simply aren't a security measure but a convenience feature. It's faster and more comfortable to drag a finger across a reader than to enter a password in the 10-25 character range.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
My keys keep flipping you off.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe worse, what if for some accident (i.e. a small cut in the finger, a burn, etc) you change your own fingerprint? You are tying to be able to use your phone to unlock it with a specific finger of a specific hand.
Regarding others, you are leaving copies of what authentifies you on everything you touch. Probably won't be so hard to 3d print gloves with your fingerprint, or even 2d print the fingerprint and glue that print into your fingers/gloves if you want to go low tech.
Yes, Is just your phone, but,
Re:How do you change your fingerprints (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
A lighter should do it.
Might take a while for permanent change though.
Re: (Score:2)
And they'll be cooler than your old ones.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Did someone just imply that fingerprint scanners are a new technology? I was under the impression that it was not a secure technology and thus not used widely. Maybe new for Apple but I've got a couple old junk notebooks with fingerprint scanners here somewhere...
Two big differences. 1) This reads living tissue under the skin, which is more secure than a simple fingerprint that can be found anywhere. 2) This is integrated into something you touch already, the home button. It doesn't add any additional steps for the user.
Another example of Apple taking an old idea and applying it in a very elegant fashion.
Re:uhmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It's how you apply the tech, and what you do with it. The ATRIX 4G had a fingerprint sensor, but it was definitely a less elegant implementation, having to swipe your finger down across a sensor on the back of the phone. Apple puts it right where you always touch to activate the phone anyway, and dooesn't even make you change your behavior -- just touch. It also allows touch from any orientation and tilt of your finger so you don't have to worry about getting the touch perfect.
Fingerprint scanning while allowing the user to not do anything special to scan the fingerprint. That's the elegance. That's what's going to get it used in large numbers as opposed to the ATRIX, where it ended up being a rarely used gimmick.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
And the NSA doesn't spy on Americans. "No Sir, we do not" - James Clapper
I don't believe our government is capable of telling the truth any longer. I don't believe the population, as a whole, is able to distinguish between truth and propaganda. And the surprising thing is, there is a large group of people who think government is the solution to the problems created by government.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe our government is capable of telling the truth any longer.
Oh, they're capable. They're just not *incentivized* in any way. When there's every reward for pulling off a lie, and no punishment for getting caught in one--are you going to tell the truth?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the benefit of this is that it would prevent small children from buying stuff.... if the parent is smart enough to set up the finger print authentication before giving the phone to the kid.
Yes, iTunes purchases can be configured to use the fingerprint.
Re: (Score:3)
We've tried this on commercial grade fingerprint locks - even using medical grade silicon gel it doesn't work. I don't know the specifics of scanner, but at least ones that cost $1000 a pop can be hardened against this sort of thing.
Re:The real concern .. the real fear .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, so I have to comment on this.
Again Apple has stated this information is not stored on a cloud or server. It also doesn't send your fingerprint scan to a server, your fingerprint generates a data key that is compared against data stored in an encrypted section of the CPU. So there is no centralized "data" to send to the NSA, court approved or otherwise. Apple is not consolidating a list of user profiles with fingerprint scans that the NSA or any policing agency could then demand access too.
Leaving a fingerprint on a cup at Starbucks is not going to lead to the NSA hacking into your iTunes account to profile your taste in music and movies to find out if you are a suspect terrorist.
You have the audacity to ask people to learn by the news, but when the news is spreading FUD and garbage all you are asking, and contributing to, is an increase in social ignorance.
The only thing I fear these days is a growing lack of common sense and outright stupidity of the Idiot Elite that would rather believe in Hollywood fictitious level of government conspiracy, and "report" on it, rather than actually trying to understand the science of the technology they are using.
Re:Other Privacy issues (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/the-unexpected-result-of-fingerprint-authentication-that-you-cant-take-the-fifth/ [wired.com]