As flashy as the iPhone 5s fingerprint scanner was, it was announced at a particularly bad time, with recent national security links eroding trust in Apple and other tech companies. Was Apple creating a de facto national fingerprint database? Would fingerprint security on a phone even make sense? To Bruce Schneier, the security world’s public intellectual, it could be a fairly reasonable decision. “Fingerprint authentication is a good balance between convenience and security for a mobile device,” he says in a piece for Wired written before the announcement. Which, of course, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be hacked — through possible methods he lays out. And as for the database, how worried you are will have to depend on how much you trust Apple.
What would it take to crack Apple’s fingerprint reader?
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
