Researchers at the University of Michigan in the US were asked to physically reproduce the fingerprint of a murder victim, so that the police could gain access to the data existing in the victim's smartphone, and this was possible after many failed attempts to deceive the device's fingerprint reader.
The terminal in question is a Samsung Galaxy S6, and it initially refused to unlock itself based on a 3D fingerprint printed using plastic, but the reproduction of the fingerprint on a paper support, which conducts the electric current, proved to be successful, so the police managed to access data from that device.
The biggest problem in this entire unlocking process was that the fingerprint image in the police archive was not 100% complete, there were small breaks between the stripes, so it was necessary to use a special software to fill those holes, so that the fingerprint reader can distinguish the fingerprint correctly.
Things were easy to do and for you the Samsung Galaxy S6, unlike the iPhone, does not completely block if you try to read a wrong fingerprint too many times, so these researchers were able to try all possible methods to unlock the terminal and access the existing data in it.
The fingerprints they provided us were just ink on paper, which doesn't have a conductive property. So the first thing we tried was to print the fingerprints on a special conductive paper, just like a photographic paper. That idea appealed to us, so we said let's try to see how we can improve the quality of the fingerprints that the police gave us.
The whole process was a long one, the researchers initially made plastic reproductions of the victim's fingers, these needing 40 minutes to be made because it was necessary to apply a layer of silver or copper so that object could conduct electricity, the procedure itself also being expensive.
In the end, their procedures proved to be successful, and thus the terminal was accessed, but the paper that conducts the electric current represented the simplest solution to the problem.
