Apple’s Face ID is a lot of things. People have been talking about it non stop firstly because it seems like a very futuristic bit of technology, along with the fact that it meant that a new era in technological privacy was coming around.
Pretty much from the moment that Apple’s facial recognition technology was announced, a lot of people started to try and break it to see if it was truly secure or not. Some previous researchers that have tricked Apple’s facial recognition in order to make it so that they can access someone’s smartphone without them realizing by using high quality masks which shows that the system is definitely not perfect by any stretch of imagination.
Researchers working at Tencent, a tech company that has its fingers in a lot of different pots from app development to hardware development, have revealed a new security flaw that explains the way that facial recognition technology works all in all.
These researchers basically placed glasses upon an unconscious participant in the research, placed two pieces of tap on the lenses of the glasses and were subsequently able to trick the facial recognition software thereby allowing them to access the phone.
This happened because of the fact that the facial recognition technology has what is called a liveliness detector. This liveliness detector is meant to check facial features to make sure that it is an actual human being and not a picture or anything like that. However, there is a weakness in the liveliness detector, and this weakness has to do with the area around your eyes.
In order to make it possible for people that wear glasses to unlock their iPhones using facial recognition, the technology does not look at this area during the unlocking process. If tape is used to cover the eyes then the iPhone will not be able to detect that the eyes are closed. This could lead to some major security breaches so it is important that Apple addresses this soon.
Photo: Thomas Peter / REUTERS
Read next: Thanks to the Sextortion Email Campaign, Cybercriminals have Collected over $69 Billion by Blackmailing their Targets!
Pretty much from the moment that Apple’s facial recognition technology was announced, a lot of people started to try and break it to see if it was truly secure or not. Some previous researchers that have tricked Apple’s facial recognition in order to make it so that they can access someone’s smartphone without them realizing by using high quality masks which shows that the system is definitely not perfect by any stretch of imagination.
Researchers working at Tencent, a tech company that has its fingers in a lot of different pots from app development to hardware development, have revealed a new security flaw that explains the way that facial recognition technology works all in all.
These researchers basically placed glasses upon an unconscious participant in the research, placed two pieces of tap on the lenses of the glasses and were subsequently able to trick the facial recognition software thereby allowing them to access the phone.
This happened because of the fact that the facial recognition technology has what is called a liveliness detector. This liveliness detector is meant to check facial features to make sure that it is an actual human being and not a picture or anything like that. However, there is a weakness in the liveliness detector, and this weakness has to do with the area around your eyes.
In order to make it possible for people that wear glasses to unlock their iPhones using facial recognition, the technology does not look at this area during the unlocking process. If tape is used to cover the eyes then the iPhone will not be able to detect that the eyes are closed. This could lead to some major security breaches so it is important that Apple addresses this soon.
Photo: Thomas Peter / REUTERS
Read next: Thanks to the Sextortion Email Campaign, Cybercriminals have Collected over $69 Billion by Blackmailing their Targets!
