Fingerprint Extraction Using Smartphone Camera

This is a good brief post by Bruce Schneier to read when the subject of biometrics come up:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.ht...

The thrust of his argument in this post is:

> The lesson is that biometrics work best if the system can verify that the biometric came from the person at the time of verification. The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system.

Which may be a good thing to keep in mind if you are using fingerprints to id someone using their phone's camera.

Ironically, this looks like another excellent argument against the use of fingerprint authentication. It makes it easier to capture someone's fingerprints without their consent - "Hey, could you hold my phone for a sec?" - "Thanks!"

Oh, and it is easy enough to break TouchID[1], so what makes using the smartphone camera any more sensible?

[1]: https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid

Can anyone say if this camera method includes detection if the finger is alive or a static image?

Early fingerprint detectors could be spoofed by static images (on paper, plastic or other materials) while modern detectors use various methods for liveness detection. It should be obvious that few commercial implementations would like to use something that can be fooled by a static image.