Fingerprint Hack (IMAGE)

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

Fingerprint Hack

Caption

The images correspond to the top 5 partial fingerprints that were selected as MasterPrints from a fingerprint data set. Researchers at NYU Tandon and Michigan State University coined the term "MasterPrints" to denote partial fingerprints that are similar across a number of individuals and can potentially be used to fool security systems on mobile devices. The red dots mark the positions of minutiae (the points that are used to compare one print with another). Note that the spatial distribution of the minutiae in these MasterPrints are quite different. For example, the third MasterPrint covers the right side of the core while the fourth MasterPrint covers the left side of the core. Together, these 5 MasterPrints span different portions of the full fingerprint, which in turn increases the probability of falsely matching with a large number of partial fingerprints.

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NYU Tandon

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