Gadgetory

all right so uh got some not-so-great news not that surprising really because I kind of speculated I knew that this was a potential problem but still nonetheless not so excited to find out that it turns out face unlock on a new s10 s10 plus not so secure and and probably less secure than I had hoped for now when you set up the face unlock on this device it does tell you it warns you hey this is not that secure you should probably use the fingerprint the fingerprint scanner on here it's a little bit hit-and-miss it's not the best I've ever tried it's in the display so you kind of adjust your expectations for that but it's nowhere it's not on the level of confidence that you have say for example with a capacitive fingerprint scanner on the back of a device it's not on that level in my opinion so the face unlock then becomes kind of a compelling option I use it on the oneplus device I've used optical based face unlock for a while but analysts son will comes in and he's like you know I'll just crack your face on like I don't care what your face unlock I'll go on your phone if I want to and I'm like geez will first of all aggressive not your typical character that you bring to the table but okay fine give it a shot so he opens up this just happened he opens up an unbox therapy video on YouTube holds it up to my phone I did not reject or redo my registration of my face and boom it unlocks my phone way easier then I'm happy with to the point where now I'm questioning even having face unlock enabled because obviously there are videos of my face in particular all over the internet so anyhow we're gonna try and do the demonstration I'm gonna try to show you here and replicate what just happened downstairs and show you how face unlock is less secure than you might expect and how you can use a simple video in fact I'll use one of my own videos from YouTube on another phone to unlock the s10 that I've been using the current one that has my face registered okay so this is the galaxy s 10 standard version right there I have face unlock enabled fingerprint also enabled and then this is wills phone over here okay that depicts will three nice little setup going on okay so I'm gonna launch this particular video here put it into full screen okay you can see it's my face it's not even the great image of my face actually because it's kind of in shadow there's a hat involved so I was surprised when he was telling me he could just unlock my my device I'm gonna make sure brightness is up yeah it's up okay cool and then now I'm gonna lock this phone I'm gonna hold the video up to it hopefully Jack can capture what's going on here so I'll hold a video up like this and put them relatively close together how close did you have it well was around here there you go you get that Jack okay look I'm gonna spin this around real time a video my face is Klinger prints on the display for that matter and the phone is now unlocked now if you follow that you saw it went straight from the lock screen we'll do it again keep it on that angle okay boom got it face unlocked now my face is moving around a lot in there as well I mean it's a simple video Jack wants to do it one more time that's twice now that it's done it here we go boom again immediately off the video not very hard to do and this is a video that's publicly available online it's just on the YouTube channel I mean obviously there's plenty of people that have video of their face that exists somewhere in people's photos and video folders and on YouTube and on Facebook and various other places so I knew it was possible of course I had read in the past that this particular technology was not all that secure definitely not as secure as what Apple's doing with face ID and so on but I suppose just seeing it in action and watching a video of myself unlock this device first of all as well that video I have a longer beard in it it was a long time ago weird lights reflections shadow from the Hat you're like wow man yeah that's a it almost seems a bit too easy where you start to get a bit concerned about using the technology at all now some individuals might not have that much video of themselves out on the internet you may not be as concerned about this potential but for those of you that are kind of exposed in that fashion there's a lot of footage of yourself out there in public you know maybe you're a bit concerned if somebody got a hold of my phone knew that where it came from and knew that it was mine they could unlock it just by launching a YouTube video on another phone no matter who you are I think that's a bit scary so I guess this is just a warning this is a convenience thing understand that if you go for the convenience of the speedy face unlock that you can get an s10 as 10 plus phones like the 1 plus and so on there is this downside that it's pretty easy to crack it so if you use it be aware otherwise go for the alternative authentication in the form of the fingerprint scanner in this case in display it does work but it's a bit of a bummer that the face unlock is so easily cracked I knew it was possible but seeing it in action it's a bit rough I gotta be honest it's a bit unfortunate