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Security researchers have come up with a new technique to replicate a person's eye to bypass iris-scanning security systems. A team at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid discovered a method to recreate the image of an iris from digital codes of real irises stored in security databases, and shared the findings at the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The new discovery has raised doubts over what has been considered to be one of the most secure methods of biometric security. According to The BBC, researcher Javier Galbally and his team, which included researchers from West Virginia University , were able to print out synthetic images of irises. An iris code is the data stored by recognition systems when it scans a person's eye and contains around 5,000 different pieces of information. While researchers have been able to create realistic iris images for some time, it is thought that this is the first instance where the fake image can be generated from the iris code of a real person, a method that could be used to steal someone's identity, the report said. In one of the experiment, the researchers were able to test their fake irises against a leading commercial-recognition system, but 80 percent of the attempts, they claimed that the scanner believed it was a real eye.

Technique to bypass 'iris scanning' in biometric security