Security News > 2020 > April > Cisco Research Shows High Success Rate in Bypassing Fingerprint Authentication
Cisco has conducted a research project on bypassing fingerprint authentication systems and it achieved a success rate of roughly 80 percent, but the company's experts were unsuccessful against Windows devices.
In the case of mobile phones, the researchers bypassed fingerprint authentication on a majority of devices.
The researchers believe fingerprint authentication on smartphones is actually weaker compared to 2013, when Apple introduced TouchID with the iPhone 5 and the system was first hacked.
"The results show fingerprints are good enough to protect the average person's privacy if they lose their phone. However, a person that is likely to be targeted by a well-funded and motivated actor should not use fingerprint authentication," Cisco Talos wrote in its report.
"For a regular user, fingerprint authentication has obvious advantages and offers a very intuitive security layer. However, if the user is a potential target for funded attackers or their device contains sensitive information, we recommend relying more on strong passwords and token two-factor authentication," it added.