A touch of a finger can unlock a phone with no password. However, this convenience has left a gaping security hole. New findings published monday by researchers at NYU and Michigan State University suggests that smartphones can easily be fooled by fake fingerprnts digitally composed of many common features found in human print. In computer simulations, the researchers from the universities were able to develop a set of artificial "Masterprints" that could match real prints similar to those used by phones as much as 65% of the time. The researchers did not test their approach with real phones, and other security experts said the match rate would significantly lower in real life conditions. Still, the findings raised troubling questions about the effectiveness of fingerprint security on smartphones. Full human fingerprints are difficult to falsify, but the fingerscarrs on phones are so small they only read partial fingerprints. Phonemakers can increase security by adding a larger fingerprint scanner and adding some newer biometric security options, such as an iris scanner. Also, phone user can protect themselves by turning off fingerprint authentification for their most sensitive apps, such as mobile payments.
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