It’s been a tough week for Apple after it confirmed what many observers had been anticipating; that iPhone sales are slumping with less and less people upgrading their handsets.
However, at least the company can breathe a sigh of relief heading into the weekend, after a cyber security expert postponed plans to detail a Face ID vulnerability at a high-profile hacking conference.
Chinese researcher Wish Wu had been planning a presentation called “Bypass Strong Face ID: Everyone Can Deceive Depth and IR Camera and Algorithms” at the Black Hat Asia 2019 conference.
He had planned to show how Face ID could be bypassed with a piece of paper printed in black and white. However after discovering the alleged bypass worked infrequently, and only under certain conditions on an iPhone X device, while wouldn’t work at all on the newer iPhone XS and XS Max devices.
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Wu, had planned to make the make the presentation on behalf of his employer Ant Financial which uses the Face ID tech as part of its Alipay digital payment system.
The company told Reuters (via 9to5Mac): “The research on the Face ID verification mechanism is incomplete and would be misleading if presented.”
Wu himself said we would continue the work. He added: “In order to ensure the credibility and maturity of the research results, we decided to cancel the speech.”
No-one has ever detailed a reliable way to fool the Face ID, since it was unveiled alongside the iPhone X in 2017. Apple claims there is a one-in-a-million chance a random person could unlock an iPhone, while it claimed there was a 1-in-50,000 chance the Touch ID fingerprint sensor could be cracked randomly.
Do you feel safer with Face ID? Or do you miss the convenience of the Touch ID sensor? Let us know in a tweet @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
