Video: Galaxy S10’s face unlock is easily defeated with a video of oneself

It’s no secret that biometrics on Samsung’s earlier Galaxies with their old-school 2D facial recognition can be spoofed by using a headshot. The latest Galaxy S10 series is no exception.

As noted by Unbox Therapy’s Lewis Hilsenteger, he was able to trick the face unlock on his Galaxy S10 simply by holding a video of himself up to the phone.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S10 features in-display fingerprint unlock and face unlock. After some testing I’d suggest using fingerprint unlock exclusively. The simple hack in this video defeats the face unlock security. If convenience is your priority face unlock will work but understand the potential consequences.

And here’s the video of it in action.

The Loop’s Dave Mark observed that this could be a major problem if someone takes video of a victim’s face and steals their phone to unlock it easily in just a few seconds. With that in mind, it’s fair to stress that Samsung’s face unlock has never been intended to be secure.

Whereas Face ID uses depth mapping to sense the features of your face in 3D, Samsung has opted against outfitting their phones with such a sophisticated infrared-based face unlock.

Instead, the company is using a simple photo matching which can be fooled with a headshot or a video of yourself. This is actually why Galaxies use a combination of different biometrics, including iris scanner, two-dimensional face matching and fingerprint scanning.

I want to put a question to our Android-totting friends: will this discourage you from using the face unlock function on your Galaxy S10?

Feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section down below.