If you have in your possession a regular inkjet printer, a certain type of compatible ink, and fifteen minutes of spare time, then you could be well on your way to bypassing the biometric security on a smartphone. A recently conducted research has concluded that using a certain technique, it is in fact possible to gain unofficial access to a smartphone protected by a fingerprint scanner. How? By printing an image that uses a specialized conductive ink. Here’s how this trick works.
The process involves using a very specialized ink that is manufactured by AgIC, a company with a history of producing conductive inks and special paper that has a primary use within the production of DIY circuit boards. This isn’t exactly one of those seamless processes that instantly allows an intruder to gain access to a device through some kind of exposed backdoor or flaw in the operating system. It involves a little more effort to be placed than that, and actually requires the perpetrator to have good quality image of the device owner’s registered fingerprint.
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It seems relatively simple, and that’s because in all honesty, it is. The printed capacitive fingerprint has been proven to successfully allow access to devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Huawei Honor 7. There is no reason to believe that this trick can’t fool other devices as well, such as Apple’s iPhone range with Touch ID.