Re:Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure
by Retric on Thursday June 12, 2025 @10:01PM
(#44265095)
Touch ID isn’t that secure. It’s fine for personal devices, but I wouldn’t trust it alone in a government or cooperate environment.
A ~1:50,000 error rate per finger added sounds fine, but lose a few laptops and have multiple valid fingerprints etc and the odds quickly look significantly worse. Or a janitor could end up trying to log into a significant number of machines etc.
Re:Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure
by zimpenfish on Friday June 13, 2025 @01:54AM
(#44266033)
> macOS can't use Touch ID from a cold boot
Isn't that because the Secure Enclave (the only place which contains the Touch ID biometric data) is locked by your password?
"When a user's password is set up on an Apple Silicon Mac, the password is passed through a one-way hashing algorithm that produces a key used to encrypt the Secure enclave's key."[0]
[0] https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2023/04/14/the-security-encl...
Granted - there are blockers to getting there. IDK why for example, macOS can't use Touch ID from a cold boot, that's stupid, at least when there haven't been too many failed attempts or anything.