No Thumbs Up in Pictures! Fingerprint Forgery for the Masses..

Fingerprint verification is a popular smartphone authentication method used even for sensitive services such as banking. However, fingerprint verification also has some issues, such as spoofing even by inexperienced impostors utilizing a thumbs up Instagram picture without the victim’s knowledge. This can be a considerable risk with partial scanning of fingertips used on smartphones. To better understand the fingerprint forgery process and perception, we performed a hands-on forgery simulation to assess the robustness of smartphone fingerprinting technologies. Overall, 370 inexperienced participants created glue or silicone counterfeits from a photo of their fingers. Five participants logged in to smartphones with their counterfeits, and 74 registered them into smartphones as a “finger”. With improvements in the forgery process in the second run, we achieved an increase in true matches from 41 to 113. Our study shows that quality and scan enhancement is important during the forgery process – enhancement improves the match score. Our analysis also provides insights into user perceptions regarding the forgery experience. Participants intend to use fingerprint authentication less often, but we found mixed results regarding the perception of fingerprint security.