The under-display fingerprint sensor built into the new Samsung Galaxy S10 is often perceived as the most secure. This is due to its state-of-the-art, ultrasonic nature that builds a 3D map of the user biometric in question.
The Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ were released with a new kind of fingerprint sensor built into the devices’ screens. They were regarded as more robust and secure compared to their counterparts of yesteryear. Those under-display sensors were mostly optical modules that used light to read and record 2D models of the fingerprint used to unlock phones such as the OnePlus 6T.
The Galaxy S10 line, on the other hand, contain ultrasonic fingerprint sensors that have been found to be harder to circumvent in at least one test in which mock prints were made using glues. However, a Redditor with the username darkshark claims to have found a more effective – and more high-tech – method of hacking this form of S10 biometrics.
The user darkshark used a 3D-printed fingerprint to bypass the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, reported sammobile.com. The procedure followed by darkshark is not easy but it does show that Galaxy S10’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is not foolproof.
As per the report, darkshark took a photograph of his fingerprint on a wine glass using a smartphone. He used Photoshop to increase the contrast of the image, created an alpha mask, and pulled the height and depth details in 3DS Max. He then used AnyCubic Photon LCD resin printer to print a 3D image of his fingerprint which managed to fool the Galaxy S10’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensor.
People wishing to keep particularly sensitive data on their phone could also avail of other measures such as passwords, patterns or PINs in the case of such a security breach.
