Samsung Galaxy S10, Note 10’s fingerprint sensor bypassed by cheap screen protector
Screen protectors are these films of plastic or glass that we put on top of our phone’s displays to protect them from getting scratched or damaged. Some of these screen protectors are dirt cheap, while others are ridiculously expensive, and sometimes you have to wonder why on earth would anyone pay $20 for a screen protector when a $3 seems to be more than capable of getting the job done?
Well, we’ll tell you why. It turns out that Samsung’s flagship smartphones for 2019, the Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy Note 10, are susceptible to getting hacked, and this isn’t through some complex malware or technique, but rather through a cheap screen protector that is being sold for about $3.
According to a report from BleepingComputer, it seems that a couple from the UK discovered a weird bug in which when they applied this screen protector on their Samsung phone, it allowed anyone to unlock their phone even with the fingerprint sensor turned on. As you might know, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note 10 come with in-display fingerprint sensors.
As such, not all screen protectors are compatible with it as some might cause issues when trying to read the user’s fingerprints, but we never thought that it would actually result in a case where the fingerprint sensor could actually be bypassed this way. Samsung has since said that they will be investigating this issue, and in the meantime, the company recommends that customers use authorized accessories.
Source: BleepingComputer