“Biometrics are not an Achilles heel,” said Craig Williams, director of Cisco Talos Outreach. “Biometrics are something that makes it very, very easy to use. You don’t have to remember a password. You don’t have to enter a password, which makes it very fast and easy. You don’t have to carry anything around with you. And so I think for most users, it’s still perfectly fine.”
However, it’s possible to use 3D printing technology to create “fake fingerprints” suitable to cheat most fingerprint scanners from Apple, Microsoft and Samsung mobile products: Researchers with Cisco Talos created different threat models that use 3D printing technology, and then tested them on mobile devices (including the iPhone 8 and Samsung S10), laptops (including the Samsung Note 9, Lenovo Yoga and HP Pavilion X360) and smart devices (such as a smart padlock).
The fake fingerprints achieved an 80 percent success rate on average, where the sensors were bypassed at least once. Researchers did not have success in defeating biometrics systems in place on Microsoft Windows 10 devices (though they said that this does not mean they are not necessarily safer; just that this particular approach did not work).
