Sunday, November 3, 2013

Apple Takes Additional Precautions with its iPhone Fingerprint Sensor

After the release of iOS7 which touted several new security features, I gave Apple some grief for the discovery of a security which was indicative of  some lackadaisical security testing.  In the spirit of equal time, however, I need to give Apple its "propers" regarding some security forethought.  In a recent online post, Mactrast.com discusses Apple's apparent pairing of its TouchID sensor with the specific processor chip contained within its 5S phone.  In other words, swapping out either a touch sensor or the phone's processing chip rendors access to the biometric data useless for accessing the phone's applications.  This clearly showed forethought on Apple's part re: securing biometric information as well as sensitivity to applicable privacy concerns.  

You can read the full article here. Note that the article (correctly) points out the potential issues re: repairing phone screens on the 5S (translation -- if the screen repair damages the TouchID sensor then the sensor and chip will need to be replaced in order for the biometric feature to work...which means that you're basically talking about a whole new phone.)

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