- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
Matthew Green's iPhone was safely locked -- until his 7-year-old son Harrison figured out how to grab his dad's finger to unlock it.
When it comes to privacy, Matthew Green is a guru. This college professor knows all about NSA spying, encryption, computer security -- the works.
Yet he's met his match: his 7-year-old son.
You see, Green owns an iPhone 6 Plus. That means everything on the phone is encrypted until Green -- and only he -- unlocks it with his finger.
But Tuesday morning at dawn, little Harrison crept into his parents' bedroom and walked over to his dad's side of the bed. He quietly reached for his father's iPhone, grabbed his right hand and pressed his large thumb onto the fingerprint scanner.
Green woke up and couldn't blame the kid. After all, it was dad who loaded the phone with Minecraft and Angry Birds Transformers.
For Green, who teaches cryptography and computer security at Johns Hopkins University, it's a perfect argument against the notion that iPhone encryption is unbreakable -- for thieves or police.