This case of Face ID fail pops up right after some Vietnamese scientists fooled it using a 3D mask. Ms. Sana Sherwani and her kid Ammar Malik gave a short demo video fooling Face ID on Ms. Sana’s iPhone X. Apple has also published a white paper on the security of its feature, stating several weak points of the Face ID.
Face ID fooled by mother and son
While this is not the first case of Face ID fail on an iPhone X, this is the most alarming one so far. In case of Ms. Sana and her 10-year-old fooling Face ID, we can see a considerable age and facial-features gap between them. The family gave an interview to Wired on the matter. Attaullah Malik, husband of Ms. Sana and a director of technology operations at Taskstream stated, “TrueDepth camera’s depth map of my wife’s face, which was created by projecting and analyzing over 30,000 dots, wasn’t accurate enough as it worked with my 10-year-old son. He doesn’t fall under the “twins” exception and has a big age difference compared to my wife. His face is smaller than my wife’s face and the geometry of their faces don’t match, at least to human eyes. Also, the additional neural network present in iPhone X that’s trained to spot and resist spoofing doesn’t work as intended in this scenario”.
Apple admits Face ID can be tricked
In a recent white paper on the security aspect of Face ID, Apple has admitted that Face ID is prone to be tricked by twins, children, and siblings. While this is honest, it is certainly as not reassuring as the million-to-one error ratio claimed on the Face ID during the launch of the iPhone X. Also, Vietnamese scientists recently claimed to have fooled Face ID on the iPhone X using a 3D mask that was printed at a cost of $150 (roughly Rs. 9,700). After all these fails, we can safely say that Face ID is indeed not foolproof or even as secure as the Touch ID.
