Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President at Apple, Inc. speaks about the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus during an Apple event at the Flint Center in Cupertino
Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President at Apple, Inc. speaks about the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus during an Apple event at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California, September 9, 2014. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are equipped with touch id and fingerprint sensors. These features are very important in the Apple iPhones because of the introduction of the Apple Pay. The Touch ID and the Fingerprint Sensor play important roles when transactions are carried out through this system.

The mobile security company LookOut Inc., conducted a test on the iPhone 5S when it was released last year. According to Marc Rogers of LookOut Inc, he was able to hack the smartphone in spite of its Touch ID and fingerprint sensor. When the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were released the first thing Rogers did was to test whether anything had changed in the Touch ID sensor.

Rogers wrote on the official blog of LookOut Inc., that he did not expect drastic changes, but he at least hoped that there would be some improvements. He went ahead and created fake fingerprints using the same technique that he used to hack the iPhone 5S.

To his dismay there was no improvements between the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6. Using the pervious technique he was able to fool both the devices. He goes on to write that there were no additional settings to help users tighten the security. The feature to allow users to set a Timeout for the Touch ID after which a pass-code must be entered was not available. The only thing that he noticed was the sensor was more sensitive that made it possible for higher resolution scanning.

However, there is hope the fake fingerprints that fooled the iPhone 5S was not able to fool the iPhone 6 because of its sensitive Touch ID. According to Rogers it needs skill to fool the system such as clear fingerprint clone that has to be correctly proportioned and positioned along with being thick enough for the sensor to get confused.

This makes it very difficult and challenging for criminals to lift the fingerprints off the device surface and unlock it. This could be highly unlikely he states.

The improvement in the Touch ID sensor shows that Apple is improving it technology. Touch ID is the most effective and adequate security, but as the Touch ID is used to unlock the phone as well as carry out transactions it could attract unwanted people looking to exploit them.