Apple’s latest iPhone release may not be as secure as previously thought after a group of hackers in Germany claimed to have bypassed a critical safety feature on the newly released smartphone. And what’s more, members of the Chaos Computer Club are backing up the claim that they’ve hacked the new Touch ID fingerprint system by posting a video to YouTube (see below) that purports to demonstrate exactly how they did it.
According to the hackers, their method of foiling the system, which involves obtaining a high-resolution photo of a fingerprint and then reproducing it through a physical fake (in this instance, a glue model), is relatively easy. But before you panic about the safety of your phone’s contents, The Verge assures iPhone 5S users that it’s unlikely most thieves would go through the trouble of recreating the fingerprint in the first place. What it does do however, according to the online tech publication, is call into question the sophistication of Apple’s new security technology.
Apple has yet to respond to the hackers’ allegations.