Many tend to think of biometrics as the ultimate passcode. The patterns of our irises and blood vessel in our eyes, or the whorls of our fingerprints, are held to be unhackable. And yet, our individual biological attributes must be reduced to algorithms to be useful to computers. Once reduced to a set of numbers, they are as hackable as any other complicated passcode.
Now a white hat hacker has shown he can use a photograph to reproduce the thumbprint of the German Defense Minister.
Biometrics are not a silver bullet, just another good layer of security.