Using A Laptop’s Face-Recognition Login? Bad Idea
Written by Evan SchumanNo stunning revelation here, but the facial recognition included with several vendors’ laptops laptop vendors doesn’t work very well. Yes, it can be fooled by a photograph or other digital images. The latest details were revealed at the Black Hat security conference—tagline: Yes, You’re Every Bit As Doomed As You Thought—by a researcher at Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Centre, a Hanoi-based security firm.
To be fair, most vendors have marketed the face-recognition feature as a convenience, and they suggest using more robust security (such as almost anything else) to protect sensitive files. Also, the research said that it sometimes was a bit more complicated than showing an ordinary photo. For example, Toshiba systems forced the researcher “to move the images a bit to fool the technology because it looks for facial movement.” But if any retail IT folk are thinking of using this method as even a first-level security defense, they should probably rethink it.
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Is there really an improvement between a mag swipe and contactless tap if multi-factor authentication is required?
-Ed
