Biometric door lock easily fooled with photocopy

I can’t decide which trope is more commonplace: the one where in the future, every door is sealed and locked with fingerprint scanners, or the one where the heroes break through said doors with a latex copy of a fingerprint. It’s funny, when you think about it, that we’ve essentially defeated a security mechanism that has yet to become widespread.

Turns out, you see, that fiction may be truer than truth (as it were). The dynamic duo known as the Mythbusters managed to crack a fingerprint door lock with a) a latex copy of a fingerprint b) a copy made with ballistics gel and c) a photocopy of the fingerprint and saliva.

When you think about it, fingerprint door locks aren’t much more secure than traditional door locks—in fact, they’re theoretically less secure. After all, while you can lose a physical key that someone else can find, it doesn’t require you to “lose” a fingerprint for someone else to find it. You leave fingerprints everywhere . So, there are millions of keys for your door just lying around, waiting for people to find them.

[via Engadget ]