The Galaxy S10 Can Be Fooled By A 3D-Printed Pinkie

Damien McFerran 08/04/2019 – 9:35am

Gulp

As our phones become more powerful and important, the consequences of losing them become ever more stressful. Our entire lives are contained on these pocket-sized devices, and if a criminal gets access to the contents, they can potentially empty your bank or buy loads of items before you'd even have time to react. That's why biometric security is so important on phones these days; it's the one way of ensuring that even if you do lose your phone, no one else can gain access to your personal details.

Despite Apple's attempt to kill it with Face ID, the humble fingerprint scanner remains one of the most effective ways of securing your handset. Samsung's recent Galaxy S10 apparently has one of the most secure versions of this tech; it uses an ultrasonic sensor to 'read' your fingerprint, which – according to the South Korean firm – makes it incredibly hard to fool.

Not that this has stopped Imgur user darkshark from doing just that. He took a photo of his fingerprint on a wine glass, dropped it into photoshop, exported to 3D Max and then printed it using a 3D printer. While it took a few attempts to get it perfect, darkshark got the whole process down to three minutes – and was able to unlock his Galaxy S10 using the 3D-printed fake.

This isn't the first time that 3D printing has been successful in beating the best biometric security systems the tech world can muster, but given that Samsung has been very confident in its new ultrasonic sensor, it will come as quite a shock. It basically means that someone could steal your phone and take a photo of your fingerprint (heck, there might even be one on the phone's glossy casing) to unlock it.

Given that our handsets now use biometric security to lock away banking apps, it's clear that this is a major issue. We're also not sure how Samsung could 'fix' this problem. Perhaps, in the future, phones will have to use a combination of fingerprint and face unlock to offer the most secure system; while even these wouldn't be unbeatable, it's clear that the aim here is to make it as hard as possible for criminals to gain access to your personal details.