Chaos Computer Club is a German group that demonstrated over the weekend how easily users' fingerprints can be reproduced to fool fingerprint readers. During a conference held over the weekend, those from the CCC they presented the reproduced fingerprint of the German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen, it being made based on public photos of it.
The photos were recently recorded, had high resolution and included her thumb, the VeriFinger program also being used. Apart from this achievement, the CCC also demonstrated how it can be tricked touch ID with a similar method, so the Apple system does not differentiate between real skin and a synthetic material that imitates the shape of the finger, having an applied fingerprint.
Instead, he explained how fingerprints can be snatched from persons at public events by simply using a standard photo camera. The main source was a close-up picture of von der Leyen's thumb, obtained during a news conference in October, along with photographs taken from different angles to get an image of the complete fingerprint.
The difference between the current method and the old ones is that a thief or hacker does not necessarily have to make a physical copy of the fingerprint. Using only pictures, he can create a duplicate fingerprint without actually getting close to us, and after stealing the terminal he can retrieve all the data from it without much effort.
Unfortunately, all systems that work on the basis of fingerprints are susceptible to such attacks, so no one can prevent them in any way.
