Jelly fingers are an effective way of trifling with security systems, Japanese researchers have found.

Boffins have made artificial fingers and prints out of jelly that have been effective at tricking biometric systems.

The researchers said that the prints were easy to fake by using prints found on glass.

In theory it could be possible to gain access to a company's biometric security systems by stealing a glass the chief executive had used with his lunch.

The experiments, which have cast doubt on the effectiveness of fingerprints as a form of biometric security, were carried out by engineering professor Tsutomu Matsumoto and his colleagues at the Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences at the University of Yokohama.