Face unlock on the Galaxy S10 can be fooled by a photo or video

[invis]

The Samsung Galaxy S10 comes with many upgrades over its predecessor, but the facial recognition feature does not seem to be one of them.

Several tech publications including The Verge, Unbox Therapy and SmartWorld were able to fool the face unlock feature on the Galaxy S10 with a photo, video or even a sibling with some resemblance.

Jane Wong, a software engineer, tweeted that she was able to fool her brother's Galaxy S10+ with her face. She added that her brother was able to unlock the Galaxy S10+ with his eyes closed.

Lewis Hilsenteger from Unbox Therapy showed in his video that he was able to unlock the Galaxy S10 with video playback on another phone.

Despite having several indirect cues (e.g. focus distance, pixelation, fingerprints and smudges on the phone playing the video, overlaid static features) to indicate that something was off, the Galaxy S10 still went ahead to unlock itself.

Facial recognition systems on Android phones have been known to be quite vulnerable to spoofing attacks.

Forbes used a 3D-printed head in December 2018 to test the facial recognition feature on flagship phones such as the iPhone X, the LG G7 ThinQ, the Galaxy S9, the Galaxy Note8 and the OnePlus 6.

The iPhone X with Face ID was the only device to remain locked under all the test scenarios.