Hasta La Gadget!

It might have taken some extra time, but Samsung quickly adopted biometric security on their new S5 flagship Android phone. However, it didn’t take hackers long to figure out a way to defeat it.

Apparently, the fingerprint scanner of the S5 isn’t hard to spoof. SRLabs have been able to spoof it using a lifted print. It took them only a few minutes to create a dummy finger to allow them access to the phone. This is also true of the scanner on the iPhone 5s, however the iPhone 5s has got a password to allow access to the scanner, which the Galaxy S5 doesn’t have yet.

Hopefully, a quick software update will patch this vulnerability. PayPal has already reacted with a statement, saying that there are plenty of additional safeguards that will allow users peace of mind when using biometric security. With any luck, your money is still safe.

[via BGR]

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Modern stealth action video games like the Metal Gear Solid series and the new Deus Ex often have a radar feature that lets you see enemies and cameras, among other things. New media artist Sander Veenhof made a similar app for Google Glass. He calls it Watch Your Privacy, and it uses open data to locate nearby surveillance cameras. That includes the mobile kind, i.e. other Glass users.

Watch Your Privacy uses a database of surveillance cameras called OSMcamera. Sander didn’t elaborate how his app spots other Glass users, just that it maps “the latitute/longitude coordinates of each Google Glass user.”

The app marks both cameras and users with a triangular warning sign along with a number, their distance from you and their coordinates. In addition, it marks the approximate coverage area of surveillance cameras. You can either have the area appear mark them as non-safe (red) or safe zones (green). If you want to stay hidden like Solid Snake, you’ll want to mark those areas red. If you feel more comfortable in a place with security cameras then you’ll mark their coverage areas green.

Glass users, crawl to your browser and head to Sander’s website to download his app.

[via Prosthetic Knowledge]

We’ve already covered the insane case of a Chinese restaurant menu that served as a successful point of infiltration for hackers to access the private computers of an unnamed oil company, so I won’t go into much more detail. However, there was a brief moment in the original New York Times story that deserves a quick shoutout here.

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