So you thought that the cool feature of the Samsung Galaxy S5, and the Apple iPhone 5S can securely help you in shopping online using your fingerprint? Think again.
Engadget reports that the Galaxy S5’s fingerprint reader is as susceptible as the one on the iPhone 5S. SR Labs has posted a video which reveals that the fingerprint sensor can be fooled easily and bypassed. However, to reproduce the fingerprint and fool the device’s biometric scanner, you need to be skilled enough.
You don’t need to panic as yet since your local thief or even a hacker needs to get access to your fingerprint from somewhere (maybe your phone’s display, your drinking glass, door handle, car window, blah, blah), replicate it on some mould and create an exact fingerprint from it. Then he would need to access your stolen phone and get past the fingerprint sensor. In this case, you would definitely be ahead of him and deactivate your phone and all passwords that were linked to your fingerprints and the phone. So, the process isn’t easy, but not impossible. And finally, only if you are a really wealthy guy, or a well-known personality, you might expect the hacker to go through all that trouble.
Watch this video clip by SR Labs, which shows you how a fingerprint was replicated in a lab and then used on the Samsung Galaxy S5 to get past the security zone and access PayPal.
