Why fingerprints make lousy authentication tokens

Severed fingers and casts made from fingerprints need not apply:

[The iPhone 5S fingerprint sensor] can detect the ridge and valley pattern of your fingerprint not from the layer of dead skin on the outside of your finger (which a fake finger can easily replicate), but from the living layer of skin under the surface of your finger, using an RF signal. That only works on a live finger; not one that’s been severed from your body.

http://www.citeworld.com/security/22399/iphone-fingerprint-scanner-better-biometrics

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