Their method, which had an 80 percent success rate, involved using a 3-D printer to re-create fingerprints taken in one of three ways: making a mold from the finger itself, scanning a finger with scanners like those used at the country’s borders, and lifting prints from an object. They then printed the prints in the shape of a sleeve that could be worn over a finger using a relatively inexpensive 3-D printer.
The researchers found that, for the most part, the brand of a specific device had little bearing on whether their hacking was more or less successful. For example, they consistently gained access to a Samsung S10 smartphone but were unable to get into a Samsung midrange A70 smartphone at all. And the Windows Hello framework in Windows 10 wouldn’t let them in, but they were successful with the TouchID system on a 2018 MacBook Pro.
