Researchers fooled Chinese facial recognition terminals with just a mask

Facial recognition has been heralded as a secure way to confirm your identity on your phone or at payment terminals, and with features like Face ID on your iPhone, it sometimes seems like the tech really is more secure than other options. But the tech isn’t infallible, as public facial recognition terminals can still be fooled with just a mask, as some recent experiments have shown.

An AI company, Kneron, shared a video with The Verge of tests it ran at facial recognition terminals in China where it appeared to fool the systems. Kneron asked us not to publish the video, so we will describe what we saw — and it looked pretty convincing. In two examples, a tester approaches AliPay and WeChat terminals at shops in China while wearing a 3D mask of his face, and the facial recognition system identifies the mask as his face, allowing the purchase. In another example, the same person feeds his ID card into a train station turnstile while wearing his mask, and the turnstile’s facial recognition system accepts the mask as his face.

There are definitely limitations to this type of test, though. The video only shows one person making attempts with their mask, and it’s unclear if that one mask worked in every single attempt, or if another mask would work for each one of these tests as well.