Scientists Developed A Method For Stealing Fingerprints Using The Sounds Of Swipes On A Smartphone

A group of American and Chinese scientists have developed the PrintListener technique, which makes it possible to reconstruct the papillary line pattern that makes up a human fingerprint by analyzing the sound it makes when swiping, that is, sliding across a touch screen.

The technology can successfully reconstruct up to 27.9% of partial and 9.3% of complete fingerprints in five attempts. And this is at the highest value of the FAR (False Acceptance Rate) security settings, equal to 0.01%. The results are significantly superior to the similar MasterPrint attack, which uses random selection.

The data source can be any application in which the user needs to swipe the screen frequently. Attackers only need to gain access to the microphone on the device.

Using PrintListener audio analysis technology, the scientists reconstructed PatternMasterPrint’s synthetic fingerprints, and “in realistic scenarios,” the technique was able to successfully recover partial fingerprints in more than one in four cases, and complete fingerprints in almost one in ten.