New iPhone fingers security with prints over passcodes

With the swipe of a finger, Apple could jumpstart a new era of smartphone security and strip away fear of tending to banking or other business on mobile devices.

Fingerprint recognition technology built into a sophisticated iPhone 5S set to hit the market on September 20 was hailed
by computer security specialists as a welcome move thatrivals will likely rally to match.

"It could be amazing," Lookout principal security researcher
Marc Rogers told AFP on Wednesday.
"What is going to happen really depends on Apple's
implementation," he continued. "We've seen Apple take
obscure technologies and make them mainstream
overnight."
Apple on Tuesday unveiled two new iPhone models, one of
them a top-of-the-line 5S with innovative features
including a fingerprint sensor to use as a security measure
in place of passcodes.
"You can just press the home button to unlock your phone,"
Apple vice president Phil Schiller during an event at the
company's Silicon Valley headquarters. "You can use it to
authenticate iTunes purchases."
Schiller added: "We have so much of our personal data on
these devices, and they are with us almost everyplace we
go, so we have to protect them."
Reticle Research principle analyst Ross Rubin described
Touch ID as a "show stealer" that addresses "a necessary
annoyance that many consumers have to deal with many
times a day."

Studies by Apple and Lookout, which specializes in
protecting smartphones and tablets from hackers, show that
less than half of smartphone owners protect handsets with
access codes
A camera sensor built into the 5S home button at the
bottom of the smartphone face peers deep into layers of
skin to analyze loops and swirls of fingerprints.
Data from fingers is stored exclusively inside the
sophisticated Apple-made chip that powers the smartphone
and is refined every time Touch ID is used, according to
Schiller.
"The company says that fingerprint data is encrypted and
not sent to its (or anyone else's - sorry, NSA) servers,"
security researcher Graham Culey said in a blog post,
making a reference to reports of US spying on the Internet.
Touch ID lets 5S owners store as many as five fingerprints,
meaning people will be able to let spouses, children, or
others they trust share access to smartphones.
Combining fingerprint recognition with "second-factor
authentication" such as verification codes ramps up
smartphone security tremendously, according to Rogers.
"Imagine a banking application that lets you press a
fingerprint to gain access, but to transfer money you also
enter a four-digit code," Rogers said.
"It could make mobile devices more secure than their
desktop counterparts."
Whether Touch ID transforms mobile commerce is likely to
depend on how Apple shares the technology with the
creators of applications tailored to run on iPhones.