Forge fingerprints: Fabrication, development, and detection techniques

Fingerprint verification is extensively used for personal authentication and is the most advanced existing tool in biometric applications. Personality traits such as facial features or signature of a person tend to change with aging, and these can be fabricated or imitated with new tools available in the Dark web. But fingerprints of any individual are supposed to be unique as these remain unchanged throughout life, except due to deep injuries on skin, genetic disorder adermatoglyphia and in old age due to skin loosening elasticity. The latent fingerprints are the most prominent category of fingerprints which used as evidence in most of the crime scene. With advancement of technology, use of fingerprints is being extensively used for the personalised authentication of important documents. The criminals too are reportedly improving their modus operandii to imitate/forge the fingerprints to get access to these documents. Large numbers of techniques to create artificial fingerprints and to identify such forgeries have been developed over the years. This review article is a brief of various techniques employed in fingerprint forgery and analysis techniques to detect fingerprint forgery which have been discussed in various research papers and news articles.