Laptop Facial Recognition Software Kinda Easy To Fake

In a twist right out of Face Off or Mission Impossible, it’s really not that tough to simulate your face well enough to fool a 1.3MP camera after all.

According to BKIS, a Vietnamese security firm, the new software loaded into Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba laptops can be faked by a picture that doesn’t even look much like you. That’s potentially some find of a security flaw. According to Dong Ngo of Cnet, he entered into a Skype video chat with a BKIS technician, who then took a picture of his (Dong’s) face. After sending it down to Q and the boys at the gadgets lab, they came back with a specially processed picture. All it took was a few waves in front of the laptop’s camera and it logged him right in. The whole thing, from the capturing of the picture to the processing to the gaining access, took about five minutes. Which happens to be the perfect amount of time for a killer chase scene. This is seriously scary for anyone who has been depending on the facial recognition software to protect their secure files. BKIS did not release the details of their special processing for obvious reasons, but you can be sure there are some hackers out there spending sleepless nights figuring it out just as BKIS did. Unless you’ve got some movie-star like backup, you may want to go back to passwords or fingerprints until someone figures this out. Via cnet ´