> Put your finger on the Home button, and just like that your iPhone unlocks. It’s a convenient and highly secure way to access your phone. Your fingerprint can also approve purchases from iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iBooks Store, so you don’t have to enter your password.

It is definitely intended to replace passwords. Pretty good security would be to require both the fingerprint and a PIN (for unlocking the phone, at that stage a fingerprint is fine for authenticating iTunes' digital purchases).

My debit card, for example, has "paywave" short range payment support. So anybody who has my card can go around making small purchases, no PIN, no signature needed. I'm fine with this because the convenience far outweighs the security concern.

With the iPhone an attacker who replicates your fingerprint can make purchases to your iTunes account using your phone. They can't purchase to a different account, they can't purchase to a different device. In that sense, requiring a valid fingerprint is more than secure enough — even if faked it's not going to do much damage.

Creating a fake print that can fool the scanner is so much harder than stealing someone's debit/credit card. It's also so much less damaging to the victim (making purchases on their iTunes account vs. making any arbitrary purchase).

I think the balance between security and convenience for this technology is more than reasonable.

No, it's not. Starbug used simple means starting from a photo of a fingerprint. The fact that fingerprints are blasted all over the place makes this very easy. You could probably even build a cheap machine that automates this process.

Creating fake print: Step 1. Either find a perfect print, or a number of imperfect prints. Step 2. photograph. Step 3. enhance. Step 4. print. Step 5. Use print on suitably encoded device (which probably means steeling their phone too).

Edit: Given the front of a phone is glass, there's probably going to be a print on the screen, though I wonder if any prints take from a phone screen would be clean? I don't know.

You're missing the point. Right now lots of people have no password at all. Touch ID is a big improvement over having no password.

Source: http://www.cultofmac.com/246572/iphone-5s-first-impressions-....

[1] From the citation: "Passcodes and passwords aren’t completely eliminated by Touch ID, then, but they almost certainly will be later on."

[2] The glass screen will have your fingerprint on it, somewhere. That can be CSI'd by anyone who finds it. Anyone serious enough to do that (and its not much) can start escalating.

If someone wants what you have bad enough, there really isn't anything you can do to stop them.

TouchID is highly secure if the only way to break into it is to have an ultra high-def image of the exact finger the device is looking for. I guess 50 character-long passcodes aren't secure because you could just tell a thief the code?

We must have wildly different definitions of "highly". I'm pretty confident I could reproduce this result in one afternoon. Compare that to other things we might consider highly secure, like strong encryption or Fort Knox. What word do you use for security measures that take non-trivial resources to circumvent?

How do you approach that part of the problem?

But if I were trying to break into an iPhone, perhaps the finger prints are on the phone. Or some other item I also got as part of the same theft. Or I found the phone in the owner's house when I robbed it and have my pick of surfaces. Or I have the owner's prints in a database because they went were convicted of a crime(I admit I have no idea what resolution those are taken at). I don't think there's a shortage possibilities. You leave prints on almost everything you touch.

To be extra clear, I'm not saying the finger print reader isn't good enough for most iPhone users; I'm not arguing the nth-grandparent's point about that. My point is that it's not highly secure, and Apple shouldn't be marketing it that way. Similarly, the lock on my front door is plenty good for my house, but no one would ever describe my house as highly secure.

You do have a very valid argument.

It needs a 2400 dpi output. This is not hard. 300 ppi source can easily generate a 2400 dpi output. DPI =/= PPI.

From what I've found online, chip-PIN does indeed reduce fraud, but when fraud does happen, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for the cardholder to get a refund from the bank.

I could see fingerprint scanning going the same way -- with vendors saying "what do you mean you aren't the one who made this purchase? The device was unlocked with your unique fingerprint!"

You're baselessly asserting your position, though.

If you write your pin on your ATM card, they will not refund you. That is policy and they ask everytime you lose your card. The bank views this as lack of due care. Likewise, if you leave copies of your fingerprints on your payment device, they could argue that you are likewise acting with un-reasonable care.

Now that this has been (so easily?) spoofed, is it reasonable to believe it is secure? That is a valid concern. Unlike a pin, you cannot reset a fingerprint security mechanism. So when it is compromised, it is over. So, the result is messy in that it puts you in a problem using today's standard practices, but at the same time, the standard practice "defense" is not applicable, and lacks an obvious alternative.

This is not a strawman, its a legitimate edge case.

3. I will hold in strict confidence my personal identification number (PIN). I will take reasonable precautions to keep my PIN separate from my ATM card and to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of my PIN.

So, you sign an affadavit verifying you did not contravence this agreement. They will screen for this as/if you file a claim for fraud.

I live in Europe, and twice in the last two years or so my card details have been compromised, and both times my bank has rang me to notify me of suspicious transactions before I'd even noticed. It depends on the bank (and the country most likely) with regards to getting a refund. I got refunds no problem, but I've heard people having problems in the UK. The fraud happened online (not sure how, I'm reasonably tech savvy and careful with my card details).

I believe that this has now changed (although I've not had a new card recently and I don't remember seeing any new TOS).

Buying apps with your device is not terribly useful unless you have take full posession of the device, in which case the owner can remote lock/wipe it with iCloud and dispute the charges with their CC company.

Having some shiny new method does not mean these people that do not currently use a pin/password will magically start using this.

Now, if Apple started forcing everyone to use one or the other (or both), that's another story.

It actually does mean exactly that in the aggregate. There are huge number of people that don't use pass codes not because they don't care, but because they are inconvenient. This technology is for them, and it will have nothing to do with "magic" when they adopt this fundamental improvement (that happens to be also a heavily marketed main differentiation from the previous model).

As for the people that never used a pass code because they weren't aware/didn't care... probably less adoption, but just because the feature is so heavily marketed, many of them will also use it.

But yeah. Significant numbers of people who didn't secure their devices with pass codes will now do so. No magic required.

1. http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_6_Security_...

Edit: I realized that the link is for iOS 6 - though I wouldn't expect them to reduce business IT functionality, not sure if these options are still in iOS 7.

As I understand it every now and again Apple will prompt you to enter your passcode/password, such as when you restart your device or if you haven't unlocked it in two days. Hardly a signal that passwords are done.

>You check your iPhone dozens and dozens of times a day, probably more. Entering a passcode each time just slows you down. But you do it because making sure no one else has access to your iPhone is important. With iPhone 5s, getting into your phone is faster, easier, and even a little futuristic. Introducing Touch ID — a new fingerprint identity sensor.

Put your finger on the Home button, and just like that your iPhone unlocks. It’s a convenient and highly secure way to access your phone. Your fingerprint can also approve purchases from iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iBooks Store, so you don’t have to enter your password. And Touch ID is capable of 360-degree readability. Which means no matter what its orientation — portrait, landscape, or anything in between — your iPhone reads your fingerprint and knows who you are. And because Touch ID lets you enroll multiple fingerprints, it knows the people you trust, too.

I believe that's the opinion being referred to.

-- the phone

-- a 2400 dpi resolution image of the correct fingerprint

-- a 1200 dpi laser printer & transparent paper

-- pink latex milk or white woodglue

-- a non-trivial amount of time

I heard that too, airbags, satnav and entertainment systems are the target...

The code is in someone's head, or you have to deconvolute it from screen smudges. Your fingerprints are literally everywhere you go.

So you don't need to get "in someone's head". You just need a good view of them using it.

Granted, getting an iTunes Store password by just watching would be a lot harder. But compared to the 4-digit lock screen pw (or even the Android shape pw) TouchID seems a bit more secure, at least to me.

I bet you if CCC wanted to make a much stronger case, they would have taken that image from a fingerprint on a glass - but that didn't work. They photographed the finger and not a stray print for a reason.

"The third feature is all about security. Now we have so much personal information on our devices that we want to protect. <snipped> So we have to protect them. The most common wave of course is to set up a passcode. Simple four digit passcode or more complex one if you want. This is something you do, dozens of times a day to unlock and get access to your phone. Unfortunately, some people find that's too cumbersome and they don't set it up. In fact in our research about half of smartphone customers do not set up a passcode on the device and they really, really should. That's the team has worked so hard in the brand new technology to make this easy and fun to do."

http://www.earningsimpact.com/Transcript/83555/AAPL/Launch-o...

Touch ID is better than nothing and that people use Touch ID instead of nothing is better than the current state but not by much and this definitely isn't a huge achievement. Which is really the biggest issue with Touch ID, it's advertised as such and people believe it.

I also bet, in 99.9999% or more of those cases, the attacker doesn't even attempt to bypass the security by faking the users fingerprint.

I'd also be willing to bet that these figures are substantially better than the current situation where people don't bother to lock their phone at all. People will use it because it's a gimmick, not because of it's security properties, but it will still work.

Activation Lock + Touch ID = all the security that almost anyone needs on a phone and much higher security than any of us have been used to up to now.

But with the new Activation Lock, it supposedly doesn't matter if it is shut down, the minute someone tries to flash the phone. Be it normally via iTunes or via DFU mode and iTunes there should appear a message that the phone has been wiped and must be unlocked with the iCloud password of the account that did the wiping. So no chance to flash the phone back to factory settings.

You can't be serious. A completely unlocked phone that anybody can trivially access with a swipe.. vs. a scanner that you'd have to lift and reconstruct someone's fingerprint to bypass. That is definitely a significant improvement.

Sure is a significant improvement for some people at least. http://t.co/EK3sdeloUX

What operating system I prefer really has nothing to do with it, even if it is linux.

Posted from my iPhone, android, third mac mini, 2nd mac air, or first thinkpad who the fuck knows (or cares? oh you obviously)

> Touch ID does not store any images of your fingerprint. It stores only a mathematical representation of your fingerprint.

> The Secure Enclave is walled off from the rest of A7 and as well as the rest of iOS. Therefore, your fingerprint data is never accessed by iOS or other apps, never stored on Apple servers, and never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else. Only Touch ID uses it and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5949?viewlocale=en_US

It absolutely isn't. Even if just the hash were sent over the wire (or if it were possible for the authorities to extract it over the wire), it would be perfectly possible for the authorities to run the same hash algorithm on their candidate print and see if the hashes match. Such evidence would likely not be admissible in court but 1) it would be enough to give the authorities a tipoff, 2) for matters deemed important enough, secret trials seem to be all the rage these days.

I would be _very_ surprised if there were no backdoor in iPhones for the authorities. Even their "secure" area. The U.S. authorities simply do not take no for an answer when having a "talk" with a vendor producing a widespread "security" related product.

I'm not sure if you understand what FUD means. Your surprise or lack thereof does not count as evidence, and is irrelevant to whether something is FUD or not.

> MS Exec: "I'd be very surprised if Linux had a lower TCO than Windows Server."

Canonical example of FUD. EXACT same thing as you're saying, just in a different context.

You've got to be careful when you say things like that, because they're trivial to refute.

The whole point of a backdoor is to be obfuscated and hard to find. So it would be very likely that you would not find one even if one were present. Your example is simply a Microsoft not bothering to do something that's perfectly researchable.

We don't have any _proof_ that Dual EC DRBG is defeatable to the NSA. By your logic we should still be using it happily until we have that proof and until then any caution is simply "FUD".

So if that's "FUD", then I've got news for you: the security world is very sensibly built upon FUD.

Which in this case doesn't matter because you're talking complete nonsense. Apple does not send your fingerprint over the wire.

TouchID represents a massive increase in security over draw pattern to unlock, and it's easier to use at the same time.

It probably also represents an increase in security over 4 digit PIN codes, though that's shakier.

If somebody swipes on their homescreen, browse the web, etc, the trail would not be just the unlock pattern.

The exploit you're talking about may work if you get hold of the phone right after the user unlocks it since the trail only has the pattern.

It's much easier that you imagine. I've been using my phone as I normally do throughout the day, and I can see the unlock pattern clearly on the phone.

The way that Apple haters use stunts like this to suspend normal logic and reasoning in order to express their juvenile spite is staggering.

No one, ever, claimed TouchID was impregnable, but it is very good security and is better than what the vast majority of people do at present.

Anyone prepared to devote the time and resources that CCC did to breaking your phone has other simpler means at their disposal. I personally believe that no one else will replicate this achievement because it is simply a publicity stunt to get clicks and feed the hordes of anti-Apple zealots.

The threat is similar. Now there is an exploit.. now the collective security researcher (and hacktivist) will work to make the hack easier by building a tool.. THERE lies the real danger.

I still commend Apple for trying. The real issue will be if I can steal the "Hash" of the fingerprint and reverse it to know who it is... so far TouchId has done well. The way that happens, Apple users will need to rethink using TouchID

Really? Lift someone's print, leave it with superglue, scan and print it and then dump glue on the scan.

That seems to be the sum total of what needs to be done. You need only sticky tape to lift the print and the rest can be done in an hour.

It sounds quite action movie, but in reality it's pretty damn simple and if I wanted to get access to your phone I could easily prepare it in advance and carry a tiny latex strip in my wallet for just the right occasion without your knowledge at any point.

Also in reality it will foil over 99% of potential unauthorized activation attempts as most people aren't going to craft fingerprints to get into someone's device.

If reality is the bar you're using, TouchID still wins.

Also, it's not remotely "pretty damn simple":

https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2013/09/23/why-i-hacked-apples...

"Creating the fake fingerprint is arguably the hardest part and by no means “easy.” It is a lengthy process that takes several hours and uses over a thousand dollars worth of equipment..."

If having TouchID will increase the amount of people that doesn't lock thir phone I'm up for it. But is not this amazing super-secure technology that will revolutionize the world.

I've read there is already something like 35% adoption of iOS7 so we may see soon how effective Activation Lock is at deterring theft.

That makes it great security.

> fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided.

What happens when the next set of hackers figure out how to remotely access and extract the fingerprints (hashed, secured, whatever) stored on the iPhone itself?

The fingerprint information stored in the 'secure enclave' of the A7 is a combination of the data related to the fingerprint combined with unique information for that specific device. So even if the data could be extracted, using it for any purpose other than unlocking that specific phone would be impossible.

No, it wouldn't send that response at all. That's called a client-side security control, and I'm sure you can think of why that's out of the question in any system.

That said, I sincerely doubt this is the case. I imagine the phone acts as a proxy for the authentication, validating the fingerprint then sending some other form of authorization to Apple or using the fingerprint as input to a cryptographic algorothm.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/ states that even professional forensics required independent verification to eliminate false positives.

The hashes, whatever they are, will not be "binary" in their nature. Matching against a range of visual characteristics requires to allow some level of fuzziness. Even assuming that near future improvements bring the false positive rate to half of that of the best forensic experts (to 0.05%), the law of large numbers guarantees that innocent people will be caught up in investigation dragnets. Just imagine the lives destroyed by these kinds of clerical errors.

The above is the same reason I'm against our national law enforcement getting access to the passport biometric databases. Even discounting the potential for abuse: once the police have a suspect with "matching" fingerprint available, they will have less incentive to find other ones.

Whatever the case, maybe we should step back and get some more perspective. How many of us don't put locks on our shared computers and phones because we don't want the inconvenience of ensuring everybody that should be allowed to use it can? My phone is a shared device and I removed any and all locks on it as I got very tired of "oh, let me unlock that for you." Basically, I want everybody that can reach it physically (when it isn't lost or stolen) to be able to access it and make calls, surf the web, use the map, search contacts, play games, etc. Is any phone locking mechanism going to work perfectly, probably not. Being able to set up my phone to unlock for anybody in my family and friends circle by something like fingerprints is a pretty good start.

I feel like we just went through this very same drill with the Chrome team refusing to hide web site passwords behind a master password, something that all browsers, except Chrome, support. Given how stubborn the Chrome team has been in its handling of this situation, I think fighting that TouchId battle is going to be equally challenging.

Common sense is, sadly, not very common, not even among the security circles.

Agreed. Complaining about this hack would be like people saying locks are "hackable" if you steal someones key and make a copy. There's always a way around any system, if a criminal is dedicated enough to get past it.

I like what you're saying, massively allow users to secure their phones without the pain of entering a password, but when it comes at a compromise of "little is better than none" is not the mentality people need for security. I'd rather see corporations rewarding and encouraging proper security strategies rather than creating some compromise for marketing.

If you're talking aggregate security, TouchID will still increase security (even with current PIN users moving to a FP Scan) as currently about 50% don't use any sort of pass code now.

If you're talking about the ability for current PIN users to maintain their level of security if they wish, -they can still use a PIN.

Bottom line is that there will be fewer successful unauthorized login attempts in the wild.

One might argue that Touch ID is too strong to be used where there was no security before. In an arms race with thefts and hackers, leaping too far forwards might not be the best option in the long term.

Even if your phone was unlocked, they probably wouldn't bother more than a cursory glance. They have more phones to steal than to bother with is on some random person's phone. When the data is important, the theft will be more targeted.

I haven't heard of it recently, but a few years ago there was a story on phone operator temporary staff that would offer clients to move their contact info from their old phone to the new one (it's a completely legit service) and keep a backup of the old info to sell it. The price for an entry was something like 2 cents, but data would be sold by batches for about 700~800 dollars.

I didn't find any quick resources in english, just for the numbers there was this piece by trendmicro (to note, they are of course biased to make the number a littre bigger) http://blog.trendmicro.co.jp/archives/4828

(Of course, this post ends with Apple has succeeded. Sigh.)

...while lowering the security of a massive number of iPhones previously secured by PINs.