Amid fears about the security of Apple's new Touch ID fingerprint sensor, an Apple spokesman has told The Wall Street Journal that the phone will only store the data used to recognize fingerprints, rather than actual images
Apple's new iPhone 5S, which comes with a fingerprint scanner, won't store actual images of users' fingerprints on the device, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday, a decision that could ease concerns from privacy hawks.
Rather, Apple's new Touch ID system only stores "fingerprint data," which remains encrypted within the iPhone's processor, a company representative said Wednesday.
In practice, this means that even if someone cracked an iPhone's encrypted chip, they likely wouldn't be able to reverse engineer someone’s fingerprint.
Announced yesterday, Touch ID is a new security feature built into the home button of the iPhone 5s, designed to allow users to unlock their phones and authorize iTunes purchases with a finger scan. The sensor captures a high-resolution image of a fingerprint, analyzing it to provide accurate readings.
During its Touch ID presentation, Apple was quick to specify that all fingerprint information is encrypted and stored "in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip on the iPhone 5s" rather than being stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud. Developers are also not being provided with access to user fingerprints as a means of authentication.
Apple also gave the The Wall Street Journal a few other tips on the fingerprint sensor, noting that it occasionally malfunctions with moist fingers or fingers scarred by accidents and surgery. The company also explained that Touch ID must be supplemented with a passcode.
Apple customers who wish the use Touch ID also have to create a passcode as a backup. Only that passcode (not a finger) can unlock the phone if the phone is rebooted or hasn’t been unlocked for 48 hours. This feature is meant to block hackers from stalling for time as they try to find a way to circumvent the fingerprint scanner.
The iPhone 5s, with the new Touch ID functionality, is set to be released to consumers on September 20. Apple is not accepting pre-orders for the device.
Apple today released iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5, the fifth updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that came out last September. iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 come a little over a month after Apple released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. The iOS 18.5 update has a...
Apple is considering raising prices for its upcoming iPhone 17 models set to release this fall, according to people familiar with the matter cited by The Wall Street Journal.
The company reportedly aims to pair the potential price hikes with new features and design changes to justify the increased cost to consumers, rather than attributing them to U.S. tariffs on goods from China.
The...
Apple today released tvOS 18.5, the latest version of the tvOS operating system. tvOS 18.5 comes a little over a month after the launch of tvOS 18.4, and it is available for the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD models.
tvOS 18.5 can be downloaded using the Settings app on the Apple TV. Open up Settings and go to System > Software Update to get the new software. Apple TV owners who have...
Apple today released macOS Sequoia 15.5, the fifth major update to the macOS Sequoia operating system that launched last September. macOS Sequoia 15.5 comes a little over a month after the launch of macOS Sequoia 15.4.
Mac users can download the macOS Sequoia 15.5 update through the Software Update section of System Settings. It is available for free on all Macs able to run ...
Following more than a month of beta testing, Apple is expected to release iOS 18.5 to the general public this week. While the software update is relatively minor, it still includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.5.
Pride Wallpaper
Apple recently announced its 2025 Pride Collection, including a new Apple Watch band, watch face,...
Apple is planning to allow users to natively control iPhones, iPads, and other devices using brain signals later this year, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The initiative involves a partnership with Synchron, a neurotechnology startup that produces an implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) device called the Stentrode. The Stentrode enables users with severe motor impairments, such as...
All I know is that it takes 4-5 seconds to home button + slide to unlock + passcode and even longer if you are using alpha numeric password.
Personally I unlock my phone ~50 times per day.
Saving ~4 seconds between slide to unlock and passcode is roughly ~200 seconds per day saved unlocking my phone or ~3 minutes. 3 minutes per day equates to roughly ~18 hours per year or more than $5,000 worth of lost productivity unlocking my phone.
That alone makes this touch sensor worth while.
I would have to troll on your post and get banned. Your post is crazy.
If you are so concerned about time lost whilst unlocking the phone then why are you on macrumors chatting about it. I'm sure that lost you way more time.
All I know is that it takes 4-5 seconds to home button + slide to unlock + passcode and even longer if you are using alpha numeric password.
Personally I unlock my phone ~50 times per day.
Saving ~4 seconds between slide to unlock and passcode is roughly ~200 seconds per day saved unlocking my phone or ~3 minutes. 3 minutes per day equates to roughly ~18 hours per year or more than $5,000 worth of lost productivity unlocking my phone.
For those who don't understand cryptographic one-way hashes, they cannot be reversed to produce the original data without a dictionary attack. A dictionary attack in this case would require a collection of actual human fingers or replicas of them to run through Apple's Touch ID to see which cryptographic hashes match the one stored on the device.
Also note, that their is a really really really small chance that two fingerprints will generate the same cryptographic hash. Cryptographic hashes by their very nature have LESS data than the source data for which they are hash. This means that the if the source data has potentially quadrillions of combinations that there may be only billions of values that they hash to (a one to many mapping of hashes to source data). More likely scenario is that your fingerprint hashes to the same value as a fingerprint that does not currently exist on the planet today and may never exist.
Think of a large 500-page book as a just a collection of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctation. You could pound on the keyboard and produce a book of random text or you could carefully craft an actual readable book. The hash reduces the book to a hash of say 500 characters which is generated in such a way that even changing a single letter in the book or the capitalization of a single letter produces an entirely different hash (cryptographic hash algorithms magnify any change to cyclically change other parts). Obviously, there is no way you could take 500 characters of data and regenerate the 500-page book (that would be the most amazing lossless-compression algorithm in the world, but also mathematically impossible). Because of this you cannot reverse it. You could however, run a hash on all books known to man to find the one that matches the same value (a dictionary attack). Finally, there is a possibility that two carefully crafted books hash to the same value, but it is far more likely that a book's hash would match some of the billions of permutations of random letters , numbers, spaces, and symbols that have never been bound into a book.
It is the same for fingerprint data. Your actual fingerprint could only be determined if somebody already had a replica of your finger in a database and could make Apple's Touch ID sensor generate the same hash from it. The worst somebody could do is break into your phone or prove that a phone did indeed belong to you. What's more, the odds of somebody else's fingerprint matching yours is like two monkeys pounding out the exact same content on a keyboard after an hour of bashing away at it. Either way, there is no chance of your fingerprint being cloned and used in other places to impersonate your presence.
All I know is that it takes 4-5 seconds to home button + slide to unlock + passcode and even longer if you are using alpha numeric password.
Personally I unlock my phone ~50 times per day.
Saving ~4 seconds between slide to unlock and passcode is roughly ~200 seconds per day saved unlocking my phone or ~3 minutes. 3 minutes per day equates to roughly ~18 hours per year or more than $5,000 worth of lost productivity unlocking my phone.
That alone makes this touch sensor worth while.
Good to know that you make more than $277 an hour :)
Dear Apple, I'm sorry because I realise it's not really your fault, but I don't trust that the NSA haven't nobbled you, and nothing you have said so far leads me to um think different, as it were.
