> "Dr. Memon said their findings indicated that if you could somehow create a magic glove with a MasterPrint on each finger, you could get into 40 to 50 percent of iPhones within the five tries allowed before the phone demands the numeric password, known as a personal identification number."
I don't understand how this is possible at all. I've always assumed that each fingerprint is essentially turned into a hash, and that there must be something like at least 10,000+ possible hashes. I mean, I used to belong to a gym that used a fingerprint reader for entry, and it correctly identified me (flashing my name) from the other 1,000+ members each time.
So as long as the hash space is reasonably large, it doesn't matter what these 5 magic imprints are, they still each convert to just 1 hash, no different from any other fingerprints.
Am I missing some critical aspect here to explain how "master prints" are even plausible -- how they could possibly act as "wildcards" for large swathes of hashes?
I don't understand how this is possible at all. I've always assumed that each fingerprint is essentially turned into a hash, and that there must be something like at least 10,000+ possible hashes. I mean, I used to belong to a gym that used a fingerprint reader for entry, and it correctly identified me (flashing my name) from the other 1,000+ members each time.
So as long as the hash space is reasonably large, it doesn't matter what these 5 magic imprints are, they still each convert to just 1 hash, no different from any other fingerprints.
Am I missing some critical aspect here to explain how "master prints" are even plausible -- how they could possibly act as "wildcards" for large swathes of hashes?