Security News > 2022 > July > Researchers defeat facial recognition systems with universal face mask

Can attackers create a face mask that would defeat modern facial recognition systems? A group of researchers from from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Tel Aviv University have proven that it can be done.

"We validated our adversarial mask's effectiveness in real-world experiments by printing the adversarial pattern on a fabric face mask. In these experiments, the FR system was only able to identify 3.34% of the participants wearing the mask," they noted.

A mask that works against many facial recognition models.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made wearing face masks a habitual practice, and it initially hampered many facial recognition systems in use around the world.

Facial recognition models can be trained to recognize people wearing their and similar adversarial masks, the researchers pointed out.

At the moment, FR systems rely on the entire facial area to answer a query whether two faces are of the same person, and Zolfi believes there are three solutions to make them "See through" a masked face image.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/12/defeat-facial-recognition/