Samsung to patch its critical fingerprint flaw next week

With the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note 10, Samsung finally introduced in-display fingerprint sensors on its phone. It sounded like a great alternative to regular fingerprint sensors, but it seems that due to its design, it was discovered that a cheap $3 screen protector allowed anyone to gain access to your phone.

Now in a statement issued by the company, it looks like a fix for the problem will be coming next week. According to Samsung:

“A software update is planned to be released as early as next week, and once updated, please be sure to scan your fingerprint in its entirety, so that the all portions of your fingerprint, including the center and corners have been fully scanned.”

Samsung also warns that users who are using these silicone screen protectors to stop using them and remove them from their phones, delete all previously registered fingerprints, and to rescan them again. It is unclear as to how these screen protectors are messing up the ultrasonic scanners on the phone, but it seems a bit silly that something so cheap could bypass a piece of tech that probably cost a lot of money to develop.

In the meantime, thankfully we haven’t really heard about anyone’s phones getting hacked or compromised as a result of this, so that’s a good thing.

Source: Samsung