Validity/Synaptics VFS0097 (VCSFW) (USB 138a:0097, 138a:009d)

Status: WIP (unmerged upstream MR)

Device ID(s): 138a:0097, 138a:009d (and the wider VCSFW family, which also covers 138a:0090 and 06cb:009a).

These Validity/Synaptics sensors speak the VCSFW protocol (not the BMKT protocol the in-tree synaptics driver assumes), so upstream libfprint has historically mis-claimed them without working enroll/verify. Found in ThinkPad T480/T480s/T580/X1 Carbon Gen6 and many other laptops.

This is a driver submitted to the official libfprint project but not merged yet, tracked here so people with these sensors can find and build the work in progress.

Upstream merge requests

• libfprint MR !626 (active continuation of !579, build this one): https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint/-/merge_requests/626 Author: Gary T. Giesen (@ggiesen). Preserves !579's driver as a single commit with authorship intact, rebased onto master's driver-registration restructuring, and adds 0x969/0xd51 silicon support plus robustness and security hardening. Hardware-validated on two devices and dogfooded as a daily fingerprint login. Newly covered IDs have their own entries: 138a:00ab, 06cb:00cb, 06cb:00b7.
• libfprint MR !579 (native VCSFW driver, inactive since April 2026): https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint/-/merge_requests/579 Author: @lewohart
• libfprint MR !619 (straight port of @3v1n0's TOD vfs0090/vfs0097 driver): https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint/-/merge_requests/619 Author: Willem Mulder (@14mRh4X0r)

What it does

MR !579 is a from-scratch native driver: VCSFW command/response over bulk endpoints, full TLS 1.2 session with the sensor (ECDH, AES-CBC, flash-stored cert/key parsing), Windows-Hello-compatible pairing, firmware-extension upload, multi-stage enroll (~8-9 stages), match-on-chip verify/identify, and per-print delete + storage clear. It supersedes the following IDs previously (incorrectly) claimed by the BMKT synaptics driver:

MR !619 is an alternative: a direct upstreaming of @3v1n0's out-of-tree libfprint-tod-vfs0090 driver (confirmed working with a Validity 0090; lacks capture support for vfs0097).

Related entries

• 138a:0090 - VFS0090, already working via the established out-of-tree route; !579/!619 aim to bring it (and 0097) natively upstream.
• 06cb:009a - currently handled by python-validity; !579 is a native libfprint alternative.

How to use it

The code lives in the merge requests, not in this repo. Pick one MR, check out its source branch of libfprint, and build from source (see docs/BUILD.md for the shared build, install and PAM steps).

# native VCSFW driver (MR !579)
git fetch https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint.git \
  merge-requests/579/head:mr-579
git checkout mr-579

Tested on

Reported on ThinkPad T480/T480s/T580/X1 Carbon Gen6; see the MR discussions for current confirmations.

License

Part of libfprint (LGPL-2.1).