You would think that your fingerprints are pretty secure. After all unless someone went through all the effort to lift your prints from objects that you have touched, there’s no where else that someone else could get their hands on them, save for forcing you to give it to them. Well unfortunately it looks like that may no longer be the case. According to the Chaos Computer Club, they claim that they are able to reproduce your fingerprints simply based on photos alone.
Chaos Computer Club, Europe’s largest association of hackers, claims it can reproduce your fingerprints from a couple of photos that show your fingers. At the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, Jan Krissler, also known by his alias “Starbug,” explained how he copied the thumbprint of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. We’ve seen before how fingerprints can be copied from a person who touched any object with a polished surface (like a glass or a smartphone). Krissler meanwhile showed how these biometrical attributes can be snatched without having to first obtain the physical objects. Instead, he explained how fingerprints can be snatched from persons at public events by simply using a “standard photo camera.” Because these fingerprints can be used for biometric authentication, Starbug believes that after his talk, “politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public.”