With the advancement of technology, security features in everything have got more reliable and secure. At least, that is what we believe. After the use of fingerprints, we believe ID theft will be something we’ll be hearing the least. Since everyone’s fingerprint is a unique one. That’s why people prefer fingerprints to pin codes and passwords. Even in movies, people clone fingerprints from a physical surface. Abstracting fingerprint data from a digital source wasn’t considered as an option. But, one recent Japanese research claims replicating one’s fingerprint needs nothing but a digital Photograph.
Photographs have become a new cool these days. Every day, there’s a flood of photographs in social medias. But the next time you click a photo, it is rather wiser to not flash your fingers in it. Posing for a picture while holding your hands up in a peace sign could pose a security threat, with hackers able to recreate prints that are the key to phones, computers, and tablets.
Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) have successfully regenerated one’s fingerprint with the help of a photograph taken from up to 3 meters away. Well, not all the photographs will give the best results. The conditions for successful cloning of fingerprint were, the photograph needs to be a high res one and it has to be taken in a well-lit environment.
It’s not the first time that one’s fingerprint data has been abstracted from a photo. More than 2 years ago, a group of hackers did the same thing. They claimed to have recreated German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen’s fingerprint by using a picture of her thumb taken at a press conference.
Remedy to not let others replicate your fingerprint from a photo:
Coming to the remedies, they might sound funny but they are the fact. Many high profile people, at a risk of biometric ID being stolen, wear gloves. It is wiser to not pose the two-finger peace sign while taking photos today onwards. Plus, these Japanese researchers told about a remedy as well. That is a biometric jammer. It is a transparent film containing titanium oxide that can be attached to fingers to hide their prints. However, such attachment of film won’t stop your fingerprint from working. Unfortunately, this biometric jammer won’t be available commercially for at least two more years.
