Monday, 29 December 2014

Politician's fingerprint 'cloned from photos' by hacker

Jan Krissler

A member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacker network claims to have cloned a thumbprint of a German politician by using commercial software and images taken at a news conference.
Jan Krissler says he replicated the fingerprint of defence minister Ursula von der Leyen using pictures taken with a "standard photo camera".
Mr Krissler had no physical print from Ms von der Leyen.
Fingerprint biometrics are already considered insecure, experts say.
Mr Krissler, also known as Starbug, was speaking at a convention for members of the CCC, a 31-year-old network that claims to be "Europe's largest association" of hackers.
'Wear gloves'
He told the audience he had obtained a close-up of a photo of Ms von der Leyen's thumb and had also used other pictures taken at different angles during a press event that the minister had spoken at in October.
German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen
Mr Krissler has suggested that "politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public" after hearing about his research.
Fingerprint identification is used as a security measure on both Apple and Samsung devices, and was used to identify voters at polling stations in Brazil's presidential election this year, but it is not considered to be particularly secure, experts say.

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