• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Cisco confirms active exploitation of ISE and ISE-PIC flaws

 | 

SharePoint under fire: new ToolShell attacks target enterprises

 | 

CrushFTP zero-day actively exploited at least since July 18

 | 

Hardcoded credentials found in HPE Aruba Instant On Wi-Fi devices

 | 

MuddyWater deploys new DCHSpy variants amid Iran-Israel conflict

 | 

U.S. CISA urges to immediately patch Microsoft SharePoint flaw adding it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Microsoft issues emergency patches for SharePoint zero-days exploited in "ToolShell" attacks

 | 

SharePoint zero-day CVE-2025-53770 actively exploited in the wild

 | 

Singapore warns China-linked group UNC3886 targets its critical infrastructure

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Fortinet FortiWeb flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 54

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 533 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Radiology Associates of Richmond data breach impacts 1.4 million people

 | 

Fortinet FortiWeb flaw CVE-2025-25257 exploited hours after PoC release

 | 

Authorities released free decryptor for Phobos and 8base ransomware

 | 

Anne Arundel Dermatology data breach impacts 1.9 million people

 | 

LameHug: first AI-Powered malware linked to Russia’s APT28

 | 

5 Features Every AI-Powered SOC Platform Needs in 2025

 | 

Broadcom patches critical VMware flaws exploited at Pwn2Own Berlin 2025

 | 

Stormous Ransomware gang targets North Country HealthCare, claims 600K patient data stolen

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Hacking
  • Security
  • From 2018: DeepMasterPrints: deceive fingerprint recognition systems with MasterPrints generated with GANs

From 2018: DeepMasterPrints: deceive fingerprint recognition systems with MasterPrints generated with GANs

Pierluigi Paganini August 18, 2024

Boffins demonstrated the vulnerability of fingerprint recognition systems to dictionary attacks using ‘MasterPrints, ‘which are fingerprints that can match multiple other prints.

A team of researchers from US universities demonstrated how to deceive fingerprint recognition systems through dictionary attacks using ‘MasterPrints,’ which are fingerprints that can match multiple other prints.

The experts introduced DeepMasterPrints, which are complete image-level prints, and used a method called Latent Variable Evolution, involving a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) trained on real fingerprint images and a search strategy to generate prints that maximize impostor matches.

Fingerprint recognition is increasingly used in various applications, but small-sized sensors, like those on smartphones, only capture partial fingerprints, making them more susceptible to incorrect matches. The researchers pointed out that their study is the first to create image-level synthetic “MasterPrints,” which can exploit this vulnerability. The research demonstrates that these “DeepMasterPrints” can spoof 23% of subjects at a 0.1% false match rate, and up to 77% at a 1% false match rate. This highlights the significant security risks posed by using small, low-resolution fingerprint sensors.

The researchers trained two generator networks using the Wasserstein GAN (WGAN) algorithm to create synthetic fingerprints. One network was trained on fingerprints from a capacitive sensor, and the other on inked and rolled fingerprints. Both networks used a deep convolutional GAN architecture and were trained adversarially with a Wasserstein loss function and RMSProp optimizer at a learning rate of 0.00005. Each generator was trained for 120,000 updates, with the discriminator trained five times for each generator update. To prevent blocky artifacts, the researchers switched from deconvolutions to using upsampling with convolutions.

To create a DeepMasterPrint, the researchers needed to optimize the latent variables (inputs) for the generator network. These variables exist in a complex, 100-dimensional space, and the goal was to find the best values (or “points”) in this space that would produce the most effective fingerprint images. The Latent Variable Evolution (LVE) technique samples these points, converts them into images, and scores them based on how many identities they can match. The researchers used an evolutionary algorithm, e.g. CMA-ES, to navigate the challenging optimization task because the process lacks clear gradients. They spent three days per fingerprint in the optimization process, evaluating each one against multiple fingerprint matchers, including the widely used VeriFinger, Bozorth3, and Innovatrics systems. The key weakness exploited by DeepMasterPrints is that a match is considered valid if even one of 12 partial fingerprints matches, making the system vulnerable.

The experts tested DeepMasterPrint attacks mainly against smartphones because of their small fingerprint sensors. Since smartphones use capacitive sensors, the researchers created their DeepMasterPrints using a capacitive fingerprint dataset and evaluated them with the VeriFinger matcher.

“In our work, we created a DeepMasterPrint that is intended to spoof an arbitrary identity in a single try. Previous work had much worse results when given only a single attempt. Besides providing an image, LVE creates a much more effective MasterPrint.” concludes the researchers. “Table 3 has the results of the minutiae-only approaches and the capacitive DeepMasterPrint image [23]. In the previous work by Roy et al. [25], the authors generated a suite of five fingerprint templates that were used sequentially to launch an attack, assuming five attempts. Our results for a single DeepMasterPrint is comparable to this suite of multiple MasterPrints. We expect LVE to do very well in creating sequential DeepMasterPrints.”

The study conducted by the researchers demonstrated that using LVE to find latent variables is possible to produce images matching a large number of fingerprints. The method successfully creates full fingerprint images, which could be used in real attacks. The technique is effective across different fingerprint matchers and datasets and has potential applications in both security and computational creativity research.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, MasterPrints)


facebook linkedin twitter

DeepMasterPrints fingerprint recognition systems GAN Hacking hacking news information security news IT Information Security MasterPrints Pierluigi Paganini Security Affairs Security News

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 22, 2025
Cisco confirms active exploitation of ISE and ISE-PIC flaws
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 22, 2025
SharePoint under fire: new ToolShell attacks target enterprises
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Cisco confirms active exploitation of ISE and ISE-PIC flaws

    Hacking / July 22, 2025

    SharePoint under fire: new ToolShell attacks target enterprises

    Hacking / July 22, 2025

    CrushFTP zero-day actively exploited at least since July 18

    Hacking / July 22, 2025

    Hardcoded credentials found in HPE Aruba Instant On Wi-Fi devices

    Security / July 22, 2025

    MuddyWater deploys new DCHSpy variants amid Iran-Israel conflict

    APT / July 21, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT