Making a V-sign with your hand while taking photos can lead to fingerprint theft.
The pose of holding up two fingers in a V-shape – which can also be interpreted as scissors or a victory symbol – can be exploited by criminals to steal fingerprints.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that Chinese cybersecurity experts are warning that advanced high-resolution zoom functions could reveal the fingerprints of the person taking the photo, giving criminals an opportunity to steal them for profit.
According to Zhang Wei, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Information Security Association, holding up two fingers when taking a photo will reveal a perfect fingerprint if it appears close enough to the camera lens.
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Holding up two fingers for a photo can make you a target for cybercriminals. Photo: Shutterstock |
Speaking at a national cybersecurity awareness event held in Shanghai on September 15, Zhang said that current image magnification technologies and artificial intelligence mean it is possible to extract enough detail to create a perfect copy of a person's fingerprint.
According to an article on the online news site Thepaper.cn, Mr. Zhang advised that photos of people making a V-sign with their hands taken from closer than 3 meters are at risk of being exploited and should not be posted on the internet.
"Photographs taken from a distance of 1.5 meters can accurately reconstruct 100% of a person's fingerprints, while photos taken from a distance of 1.5 to 3 meters can reveal 50% of the fingerprints," Zhang Wei shared.
Based on the information in the photos, criminals can forge fingerprint patterns and then use them to log into applications that require fingerprint recognition, such as smart doors and payment systems.
Professor Feng Jianjiang, a professor of fingerprint recognition at the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, said that theoretically, photographs could show fingerprints clear enough to be copied and forged, but he was unsure what the safe distance for taking a photograph was.
"The fingerprints of some people cannot be captured (at all distances) due to skin characteristics. However, fingerprint images can be clearly seen if the shooting distance, angle, center of the image, and lighting are all ideal," Feng further explained.
He suggested that users check the visibility by zooming in on the fingerprint location in the photo before posting it on social media.
