Android’s face lock security feature can be tricked by a simple photo

Tricked you, Android

When Android’s newest operating system was announced, facial recognition technology took the front seat as it was demonstrated on stage that a phone could be unlocked by showing it your face, a unique mechanism to insure that only you can unlock your phone rather than having passwords or perhaps worrying about who has seen you type in your password. Bulletproof, right? Wrong. The above video demonstrates how the security feature can be bypassed. Uh oh.

Google told TechCrunch that the feature “will only get better,” but failed to explain exactly how they will get around this problem, or if they’ll sell the feature as an entertaining feature rather than a security feature.

Tech blogger Greg Kumparak said, “Of course, this is still Beta software we’re talking about. The Galaxy Nexus won’t ship until later this month — so if this portrait trickery does work consistently (and this wasn’t just a fluke), there’s no saying it’ll still work in the final software. Third party facial unlocking systems have done things like requiring certain facial expressions or waiting for the user to blink — which, while not infallible, at least makes things more complicated.”