Sweaty hands might make you unpopular as a dance partner but they could someday prevent hackers from getting into your bank account. Researchers at Clarkson University have found that fingerprint readers can be spoofed by fingerprint images lifted with Play-Doh or gelatine or a model of a finger moulded out of dental plaster. The group even assembled a collection of fingers cut from the hands of cadavers.

In a systematic test of more than 60 of the carefully crafted samples, the researchers found that 90 per cent of the fakes could be passed off as the real thing.

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