14 DAY TRIAL // German hacker Starbug, known for defeating Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor, has posted a video demonstration detailing the various steps he had to go through to get his hack to work.
Starbug describes the attack as “very straightforward and trivial,” but he also notes “It took me nearly 30 hours from unpacking the iPhone to a [bypass] that worked reliably.”
It’s not your average homemade hack either, as you’ll need a radical scanner, a high-resolution laser printer, and a printed circuit board (PCB) etching kit to get past only some of the steps required to reproduce this hack.
You also need to perform some wizardry with GIMP (or an image processing application of your choice), and most importantly you need to know what the heck you’re doing in the first place (i.e. how that darn fingerprint sensor works its magic).
“With better preparation it would have taken approximately half an hour. I spent significantly more time trying to find out information on the technical specification of the sensor than I actually spent bypassing it,” Starbug said.
The hacker actually claims he’s bummed that Apple didn’t provide a challenge.
“I was very disappointed, as I hoped to hack on it for a week or two. There was no challenge at all; the attack was very straightforward and trivial.”
Sure, if your hacking level is “World-Domination.”