Watching someone key in a PIN and recording it, then swiping the phone is easier than building a 3D printed color model of someone's face. Not to mention that having the biometric unlock sitting on top of a PIN means that there are many fewer chances for the PIN to be observed.
Whether biometric access is a password or username is trying to force the wrong paradigm. Going back to first concepts, we had keys and we tried to make them hard to copy but not too inconvenient. The face is the key. No, there's no practical way to re-key this lock, but it's still a lock and key. But the door also has a deadbolt (PIN code) which has to be disengaged for the "face key" to function.
The username concept applies when you have multiple people using the same resource (and don't want to know or reveal whether any 2 people use the same password) -- which again doesn't apply to a single-user device.
Finally, all this combined with the quick "hard lock" of the device (5 taps of power button) gives me the impression of a very thorough approach to security.
> Watching someone key in a PIN and recording it, then swiping the phone is easier than building a 3D printed color model of someone's face. Not to mention that having the biometric unlock sitting on top of a PIN means that there are many fewer chances for the PIN to be observed.
With how cheap video surveillance is these days, any PIN that you've regularly entered on your phone in public is probably recorded on video somewhere.
So is your face, of course, but like you said that's much harder to reproduce.
> Watching someone key in a PIN and recording it, then swiping the phone is easier than building a 3D printed color model of someone's face
Right, but couldn't somebody just use my actual face? Steal my phone, hold it up to my face for a second to unlock it and then run off?
A really interesting thing to think about is what happens if somebody is in custody and is refusing to unlock their phone, but uses face authentication? Can the police just hold their phone up to their face and unlock the device that way or is there any protection from that in the law?
I thought something was mentioned about "active gaze" in the keynote? The phone detects if you're paying attention; it doesn't unlock if you have your eyes closed, it doesn't unlock if you aren't looking directly at it.
Should make it more difficult (though not impossible) to force an unlock by waving the phone in an unwilling person's face?
You only need to look at the phone for a brief moment. It's designed to quickly unlock. If you had to stare at the phone for 10 seconds it would be a frustrating experience.
Except that a regular pin pad lets anyone enter the pin. Your pin code can only be keyed in by 1:1000000 people [citation needed]. So no, your pin is not on your forehead. Your pin is an organic material with color and depth and movement that for all intents and purposes is your actual forehead.
The average opportunist thief won't be able to duplicate that key. The best that they can do is use your actual face, within a few feet from you, while you're staring directly at the phone in their hands.
Funny you should say that, here's a video of a guy accidentally unlocking a phone and using his apple pay by pointing it at him https://youtu.be/WYYvHb03Eog?t=1m27s
> building a 3D printed color model of someone's face.
A 3d rendering on a screen is probably enough. The device seems to infer 3D from motion, but would probably be fooled by a rendering or even a recording.
That makes all the interlocutors you had on video chat as potential ID thieves.
False. iPhone X has points(invisible) projected on your face from what depth is calculated. Same as xbox kinect i assume. So 3D rendering on flat display wont fool iphone.
It's been done one some laptops via Intel RealSense depth cams or similar hardware. Not sure if any other phones have featured this, though. The ones I've seen typically add the depth cam on the back for niche stuff like 3D scanning.
Whether biometric access is a password or username is trying to force the wrong paradigm. Going back to first concepts, we had keys and we tried to make them hard to copy but not too inconvenient. The face is the key. No, there's no practical way to re-key this lock, but it's still a lock and key. But the door also has a deadbolt (PIN code) which has to be disengaged for the "face key" to function.
The username concept applies when you have multiple people using the same resource (and don't want to know or reveal whether any 2 people use the same password) -- which again doesn't apply to a single-user device.
Finally, all this combined with the quick "hard lock" of the device (5 taps of power button) gives me the impression of a very thorough approach to security.