Taking pictures will leak your fingerprint information than "scissor hand", is it true?

When taking pictures, many people like to put up their index and middle fingers, compared to the gesture of scissor hands. This photo Pose has long been deeply rooted in people's minds, so that many people will subconsciously compare this gesture when taking selfies or group photos.

However, taking pictures is better than scissor hands, and the problem may not be as simple as it seems ordinary...

Copying fingerprints is not easy, but it is by no means impossible

In the movie "Ant-Man", the screenwriter used a half-minute shot to quickly cut, showing the audience how to use tools in the kitchen to obtain fingerprints and use them to crack the fingerprint lock.

When I saw this bridge section in the theater, I laughed disdainfully and thought to myself:

Please, this is the 21st century, and you still use this kind of pediatric plot to fool people.

Think about it, in addition to "Ant-Man", many action and science fiction movies have appeared in similar bridges, and the director hopes to show the wit of the protagonist's mind as a thief or agent. However, this kind of plot seems to be a bit outdated today, can the "fake fingerprint" made by this glue really crack the fingerprint lock?

Video UP Main Valley Amo once emulated Ant-Man's operation, but it ended in failure, but it looks more like a defeat caused by an operation error, and it is a less rigorous imitation experiment.

▲ Screenshot from Gu Amo video

Earlier, the veteran program "Rumor Terminator" of the American Discovery Channel also made related propositions.

In the 18th episode of the fourth season, the program team found the fingerprint lock that was known as the most advanced at that time, they spent a lot of effort to obtain fingerprint information in the early stage, used toner and 502 fast-drying glue in the process, and finally scanned to generate a clear fingerprint picture, and then made a silicone fingerprint mold, and the preliminary preparation ended here.

The program team took the silicone fingerprint and put it on the scanner of the door lock and gently pressed it, only to see the green light light on and the door lock cracked. Surprisingly, even fingerprint photos printed from ordinary printers can easily open this "most advanced" fingerprint lock.

Obviously, such a result, even the program team did not expect, adam used the photo "accidentally" to unlock the door, shocked his jaw is about to fall off, but we will find that such a result is actually reasonable.

▲ Excerpt from "Rumor Terminator"

That episode was filmed in 2006, when mobile phones did not have fingerprint modules, because optical fingerprint recognition technology was the mainstream technology in the encryption industry at that time.

In simple terms, it uses the optical collection method to identify the lines on the fingertips of the fingers, the principle is equivalent to taking a picture of the fingers, and then comparing with the fingerprint information in the database, without biometric encryption, it is naturally easy to be cracked.

In other words, as long as the fingerprint image is clear enough, it can be painlessly cracked optical fingerprint recognition, and in the face of such devices, the scissor hand that people put up when taking pictures may indeed be used by some people with hearts.

In 2014, at the annual meeting of the Chaos Computer Club in Europe, hacker Starbug demonstrated his method of using photographs of Ursula von der Leyen, then German defense minister, to prove the potential risks of fingerprinting technology at the time.

Starbug is not his real name, his name is Jan Krissler, is a well-known white hat hacker, as early as 2013, Jan Krissler tried to use fingerprint stains on the screen, with the help of glue and spray graphene material, to make a "false fingerprint", in order to crack the iPhone 5S Touch ID sensor, when the iPhone 5S was just less than 24 hours after its release.

In his 2014 presentation, he used a live image of von der Leyen attending a press conference, in which she gave her right thumbs up, which Jan Krissler used to copy the minister's full fingerprint with a Verifinger scanning device.

Jan Krissler did not want to use this technology to do evil, but hoped to awaken the public's vigilance against fingerprint security

Coincidentally, scientists at Japan's National Institute of Information Science (NII) successfully extracted usable fingerprints from a photo taken three meters away in 2017, and today's mobile phone cameras are often tens of millions of pixels, and the clarity of the photos taken is much higher than in the past, and it is obvious that it is not difficult to collect clear fingerprints from the photos.

There are risks, but maybe we don't have to worry too much

However, it is one thing to leak fingerprint information, but it is another thing to whether the safety of our property will be threatened as a result.

At present, our ordinary people are most likely to contact the scene of fingerprint recognition equipment, most of which appear on mobile phones, laptops and smart door locks, while mainstream smart phones mainly use three fingerprint recognition methods: optical screen recognition, ultrasonic screen recognition and capacitive fingerprint recognition.

Each of the three has its own advantages and disadvantages, the so-called "giving away to get".

In contrast, the security of optical screen recognition is the worst, because it is equivalent to placing the traditional optical acquisition technology under the screen, using the screen light to illuminate the user's fingers, and the sensor under the screen receives the fingerprint image information, and the fingerprint included in the mobile phone compares the feature points, so as to judge whether it is a native user, and theoretically can be cracked with a silicone fingerprint.

OnePlus 7 Pro has been cracked by this method, but its advantage is that it is fast, and today's mainstream Android phones can basically complete the recognition, unlock and enter the interface in a few tenths of a second or so.

▲ From the Tubing channel Max Tech

The second ultrasonic recognition technology collects 3D fingerprint site information, and it is difficult for hackers to use 2D fingerprint images to generate bumpy hand fingerprint paths, and it is even more impossible to make simulated fingerprints based on this.

At that time, Samsung Galaxy S10 used ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint recognition technology, compared with the optical under-screen recognition equipment of the same period, the former recognition and unlocking speed is much slower, and even makes people feel a little dazed, but its advantage is that the security factor is high.

▲ Taken from Samsung ultrasonic fingerprint promotional video

Max Tech, a tubing blogger who successfully cracked the OnePlus 7Pro, tried to use the same gel fingerprint to unlock the Galaxy S10, but ultimately failed.

▲ From the YouTube channel Max Tech, the silicone fingerprint is invalid in front of ultrasound

The third kind of capacitive fingerprint, there is more than a threshold for identifying bioelectric information, and it is difficult for criminals to produce a conductive analog fingerprint, and the safety factor is not low.

▲ iPad Air 4 side fingerprint

In addition, some devices have a live detection function, with the help of auxiliary information such as body temperature and heartbeat, to determine whether the scanned fingerprints are from real people, and add a lock to the mobile phone information.

In summary, if you use a mobile phone with optical recognition under the screen, it is possible to be cracked by the fingerprint information leaked by the scissor hand in the photo.

However, mobile phone manufacturers have also added a last line of defense to users: the entered fingerprint information is only stored locally and will not be uploaded to the network, which means that hackers cannot launch large-scale intrusions like broiler attacks.

▲ Image source: Unsplash

Therefore, if someone wants to hack your phone, he has to get your fingerprint information and your phone at the same time.

But in the end, when taking pictures, using two fingers to compare scissor hands does have the possibility of leaking information security, or we will change a gesture to take a selfie later.