Hackers Can Remotely Steal Fingerprints From Android Phones
Aug 06, 2015
Over a year ago I wrote an article on The Hacker News that warned of serious security concerns created by the iPhone and Android's Fingerprint authentication . Till now hackers were impersonated simply by lifting prints off the side of a phone and gaining unauthorized access to user's phone and thus data. However, security researchers have now discovered four new ways to attack Android devices to extract user fingerprints remotely without letting the user know about it. The attack, which the researchers dubbed the " Fingerprint Sensor Spying attack ," could be used by hackers to " remotely harvest fingerprints in a large scale, " Yulong Zhang, one of the researchers told ZDNet. Remotely Hacking Android Fingerprints FireEye researchers Tao Wei and Yulong Zhang presented their research in a talk titled, Fingerprints on Mobile Devices: Abusing and Leaking , at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, where they outlined new wa