A group of German hackers, the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) have claimed that just within two days of the iPhone 5S hitting the hands of the lucky few who pre-ordered it, they have managed to hack the fingerprint scanner on the device. The group, one of the oldest of its kind in existence and the most prominent, said they lifted the fingerprint off the phone’s surface by taking a photo of it. They have detailed the entire process in a post on their site and also showed off a video with the hack being conducted.


The reason the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5S is tricky to hack is because it scans the living layer of tissue underneath the skin, as a two-factor way of ensuring that the person unlocking the phone is the owner. While the ridges and valleys of the fingerprint provide the authentication, the living layer of tissue is a way of ensuring that people don't run around cutting off the thumbs of iPhone owners to gain access to the phone.

Apple's sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake", said the hacker with the nickname Starbug, who performed the critical experiments that led to the successful circumvention of the fingerprint locking.