The protection of the Samsung Galaxy S8's iris scanner can be easily bypassed to unlock the phone. Yes, a recent video has shown how hackers fooled the scanner.
Biometric locks for modern devices are now a common trend as some manufacturers also prefer facial recognition or eye scanning technology. Samsung Galaxy S8 is also equipped with such eye-scanning security that is called iris scanner. This scanner is mainly used to unlock the said smartphone.
Samsung earlier claimed the iris scanner is created to provide a strong security. But, researchers at the Chaos Computer Club had tricked the smartphone with only a picture of an eye. Motherboard stated that Linus Neumann, a hacker, said in a Twitter message that they had bypassed the iris scanner protection only using a print-out.
The researchers used the eyes of a volunteer to set up the security in the Samsung Galaxy S8 by using the iris scanner. After this, they took one photograph of the eyes of one volunteer. The researchers used the digital camera with the infra-red night vision setting to capture the image.
Next, the image was printed and they put one contact lens over the photograph. The Samsung Galaxy S8 easily unlocked itself after seeing the false eye. The interesting fact is the team has already posted the video about this unlocking process. In a word, the team has depicted that one can easily bypass the iris scanner protection and unlock the smartphone.
According to BBC News, tech company Samsung revealed that the scanning technology was tested rigorously to prevent all attempts that try to compromise the security. The company also uttered that any new method that can challenge this security technology will be addressed very quickly. That means if the iris scanner of the Samsung Galaxy S8 faces any genuine challenge, then the company will respond speedily to resolve the issue.
Ken Munro, the security expert, utters recent discovery reminds that biometrics is not any silver bullet. He prefers fingerprints to the iris unlock. Munro opines that fingerprints and one secret number can provide the best protection. It is true that the Samsung Galaxy users can use the password option and not the iris scanner to unlock their phone.
