Fingerprint of Politician Cloned Just From Public Photos

A member of the Chaos Computer Club has reportedly ‘cloned’ the fingerprint of a politician from Germany solely using publicly available images taken by press at a conference.

Jan Krissler created a usable copy of German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen’s fingerprints using only images and computer software. The software presumably magnified the images taken to a degree that individual details in Ms von der Leyen’s prints could be identified and easily replicated.

Krissler says that “politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public” following the publication of his research. Maybe they should too, because details like this could give someone access to anything from her phone to a highly secure building.

Fingerpint recognition has slowly been shown to be not as secure as originally accepted, with hackers working hard to find ways to circumvent it. There are other methods, like finger vein recognition, that are being developed to get around the issues traditional biometrics pose.

Source: BBC News