The Galaxy S10’s face unlock fooled by pictures, siblings

Enlarge / This is a person or a photo of a person? The Galaxy S10 can't tell. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Here's another friendly reminder that if your Android phone doesn't have some kind of special hardware for face unlock, the feature probably isn't very secure. The latest phone to implement face unlock with nothing but the normal front camera is the Galaxy S10, and users across the Web are reporting that the feature is easily confused or defeated.

There are a number of reports that say-surprise!-a 2D image sensor can be fooled by a 2D image. The Verge was able to unlock the device with a video, and YouTube channel Unbox Therapy was able to unlock the S10 just by playing one of its public channel videos in view of the camera. The worst example is probably from AndroidWorld.it, which was able to unlock the Galaxy S10 by waving a still photo around in front of the device.

The Galaxy S10 can also reportedly have trouble telling different people apart. Security Researcher Jane Wong was able to unlock her brother's phone with her face.

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