It’s meant to scoot another few people into using some sort of authentication technology to lock their phones, so the devices won’t be such a tempting target for thieves. TouchID was never meant to protect people against highly determined adversaries. (It’s interesting to note in hindsite that they also gave a pretty good clue to the secret of the technology’s improvement: It’s got super-fancy resolution.) As far as that goal goes, TouchID is every bit as good as it was a week ago. In that link, Apple describes pretty clearly what they’re going after: people who don’t use a passcode at all, and people who use lousy passcodes. While I have seen plenty indicating that Apple said TouchID is more sophisticated than old-style fingerprint sensors, I have yet to see something that said it was foolproof. As we’ve said before, we don’t find this to be the case.
A fingerprint enrolled in Touch ID (see how to do this at the Apple Support. Its hard to imagine where they might put a fingerprint sensor that it.
However, this assumes that security must be bulletproof (or nearly so) in order to be useful at all. With Touch ID on macOS, you can have secure Duo login approvals resistant to. Check out the following link, Use Touch ID on MacBook Pro which explains clearly. Obviously, in certain contexts, this is entirely true. It is plain stupid to use something that you can’t change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token. We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics. Frank Rieger, spokesperson of the CCC, said the following: There has been quite a bit of press as a result of this hack with claims that the TouchID is useless, including the announcement by the CCC, which called biometrics “unsuitable” and “just plain stupid.” The Chaos Computer Club goes on to describe why they consider this to be the case, and they use some good reasoning, I might add. This of course means the folks in the CCC will be getting a nice payday for their efforts, including a bit of money and perhaps a round of celebratory booze! Supports multiple computers (so if you have a Mac Mini and a Macbook for example) and allows proximity authentication as well as fingerprint authentication. As of this morning, the video submitted by the CCC has been accepted as proof of the hack, so if you’ve been keeping track: Yes, TouchID Has Been Hacked. Get the app from the app store and go to to get the OS X app. Apple Good News! Apple’s TouchID Sensor HackedĮarly this weekend, the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) found a way to bypass the fingerprint scanner in Apple’s TouchID, by creating a high-resolution picture of the user’s fingerprint to create a fake finger that could be used to unlock the device.