Nokia 9 PureView Fingerprint Sensor Is Fooled by Chewing Gum

The brand new Nokia flagship with five camera modules looks pretty promising but has several significant weaknesses. Recently, it shocked the world with dangerous security flaw related to its onscreen fingerprint sensor that is tricked by non-registered patterns of other fingers and even various items such as coins or gloves.

Users noticed the first issue right after the launch. Then, Nokia’s scanner had too low sensitivity and didn’t recognize the owners’ fingerprints often.

HMD Global responded to this problem with a patch dated by 19 April. The update improved the scanner’s sensitivity and really helped people to interact with their smartphones. Too much.

As for now, the PureView has an extremely responsive sensor that recognizes not only fingerprints of owners but also other prints and material objects, e.g. chewing gum packs, coins, gloves, etc.

The problem was spotted by Twitter user Decoded Pixel. He posted a video where his Nokia 9 is unlocked with two different fingers and chewing gum

Why This Happened?

The most recent update for Android 9 Pie 4.22 includes the patch from HMD Global. Most likely, engineers didn’t improve the recognition algorithm but simply lowered the sensitivity threshold so PureView now accepts prints with a quite low original match. Phone owners mention that they can unlock the gadget with almost any touch, including random taps and fingers wrapped in cloth. Developers still didn’t react to multiple complaints.

As usual, people also joke about the issue. Reddit users mention that this is a new Nokia feature that will be available for extra money – the Gum ID. Still, we shouldn’t forget about the real danger of such flaws as frauds can easily get access to stolen phones due to identification errors. The next OTA update should fix the sensor so it’s better to disable this feature now and use traditional PIN codes or graphic patterns. As well, you can order dedicated software development Ukraine here to get extra security layers for your applications.