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by acdha 2351 days ago
How do they extract fingerprints? All competent biometric implementations store hashes for exactly this reason.
1 comments

Fingerprints are famous for being left behind on pretty much everything you touch...
What makes you think that's relevant to the discussion here? The person I replied to was under the incorrect assumption that someone in possession of a phone could extract stored fingerprint images, which is not true of any well-designed biometric system.

If you do a little bit of reading about the topic, too, note how well-designed biometric systems require more than a simple fingerprint or photograph — e.g. Apple's FaceID has liveness checks for eye motion and uses a 3D scan. None of these are impossible for a well-resourced attacker but that's true of the alternatives as well. This is why you need to think in terms of threat models — e.g. the attacker who can get a high-resolution 3d scan of your face can also watch you type your passcode in so the latter isn't more secure in practice.

> the attacker who can get a high-resolution 3d scan of your face can also watch you type your passcode in so the latter isn't more secure in practice

If an attacker watched you type in your passcode, what would you do about it?

Probably not notice because it’s a hidden camera or drone way out of notice?
Well, too bad about your bank account. Better luck next time.