First United pilots ATM fingerprint authentication technology

I applaud the initiative but I would also point out that commercial grade fingerprint scanners are more easily hacked than military grade.  In my consulting to DHS on cybersecurity biometrics were a key autneticator.

What was concluded was that most commercial grade readers could be fooled by the use of a gelatin that captures the true fingerprint and is used to create a positive that is used on the reader.  The false positive rate was almost 100%.

BTW, the gelatin used is the same used for gummy bears so it was easily available, cheap and effective.

There are better out of band authenticators that are much more effective, almost impossible to hack, easier to deploy and much cheaper.

100% false positive is quite interesting to note because most studies citing shortcomings of fingerprint authentication point to true negatives where the genuine customers are rejected by the reader if their fingers are sweaty, have a cut, or for other trivial reasons. Accepting that it's easy to fool the reader using gelatine, won't it be difficult for an impostor to obtain the "true fingerprint" off of a genuine customer?