Touch ID
In 2012, Apple acquired AuthenTec, a company focused on fingerprint-reading and identification management software, for $356 million.
Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um predicted on September 4, 2013, that a fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s would help mobile commerce and boost adoption in the corporate environment.
Solely placing a finger on the sensor will only unlock the iPhone unless said setting is enabled, and no notifications are currently being displayed on the lock screen.
From the Efficient Texture Comparison patent[15] covering Apple's Touch ID technology: In order to overcome potential security drawbacks, Apple's invention includes a process of collapsing the full maps into a sort of checksum, hash function, or histogram.
Numerous other exemplary embodiments are also possible, and any other exemplary pattern calculation can be used, where the exemplary pattern includes enough associated information to narrow the candidate list, while omitting enough associated information that the unsecured pattern cannot or cannot easily be reverse engineered into a matching texture.If the user's phone has been rebooted, has not been unlocked for 48 hours, has its SIM card removed or has Emergency SOS activated, only the passcode a user has created, not their fingerprint, can be used to unlock the device or during other specific use cases.
[16][17] In September 2013, the German Chaos Computer Club announced that it had bypassed Apple's Touch ID security.
A spokesman for the group stated:[18][19] "We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics.
[21] In a 2013 New York magazine opinion piece, technology columnist Kevin Roose argued that consumers are generally not interested in fingerprint recognition, preferring to use passcodes instead.
[22] Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, writing for ZDNet, said Touch ID could be useful in bring your own device situations.
He added that Touch ID would prevent children from racking up thousands of dollars in unwanted purchases when using iPhones owned by adults.
[22] However, Brent Kennedy, a vulnerability analyst at the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, expressed concern that Touch ID could be hacked and suggested that people not rely on it right away.
[24] Kingsley-Hughes suggested the Touch ID as a form of two-factor authentication, combining something one knows (the password) with "something you are" (the fingerprint).
[24] Forbes columnist Andy Greenberg said the fact that fingerprint data was stored on the local device and not in a centralized database was a win for security.
