Biometric means of authentication, especially fingerprints, have for long been considered highly secure because of their uniqueness. And despite some established research on spoofing fingerprints, the idea has been far from achievable for scamsters and other criminals.
What is most concerning is the fact that fingerprint readers on smartphones capture the impressions only partially, which gives the “sneaky AI” an edge over the docile scanners on phones. The researchers were able to fool systems of three different levels of security with success rates of 76% (for the lowest security), 22% (for medium security) and 1.2% (for highest security).
This means that if 1,000 people use a smartphone with the most secure fingerprint scanner (with the highest security level), 12 people could be duped using the master fingerprint. Imagine what happens to people using cheaper smartphones.
