SCMP | Companies are hacking facial recognition to make it safer

• Facial recognition testing companies like Qingfei are producing sophisticated 3D-printed faces and even robots to reveal the technology’s vulnerabilities

Qingfei Technologies R&D director Tim Li likens the process of cracking facial recognition to hacking blockchains: It can be done, but is it worth the time? Photo: Chris Chang

Facial recognition is seemingly used for everything these days: Bank accounts, passwords, taking flights, entering offices, and ubiquitous public cameras with AI systems. But what happens when these systems fail us?

Last December, a company called Kneron went around the world trying to break into facial recognition systems used to authenticate people at airports, railway stations and even on payment apps. As it turned out, many of them could be fooled, including self check-in terminals at the Netherlands’ largest airport, where the team tricked a sensor just by using a photo displayed on a smartphone.