Apple Face ID Broken In Just One Week With 3D-Printed Face, Hackers Claim

Hackers love a challenge, so when Apple declared that its Face ID security system would be impenetrable, it was considered an invitation by tech wizards to prove the company wrong. One group has claimed that it has done just this, a mere week after the iPhone X was launched. What’s more, it was done by 3D-printing a face.

The claim was made by Bkav, a security firm based in Vietnam. In the company’s blog post detailing their method for breaking Face ID, the hackers explained how a face made using a 3D printer was able to fool the Apple security measure.

“We were able to trick Apple's AI, as mentioned in the writing, because we understood how their AI worked and how to bypass it. As in 2008, we were the first to show that face recognition was not an effective security measure for laptops (related links can be found at the end of this writing),” the post reads.

Before this claim can be taken as fact, however, it needs to be verified by other security researchers through replication. So far, no one else has managed to prove that this was the case.

If it does end up being true, however, this development could spell trouble for Apple. Especially given that the researchers claim the mask only cost $150 to make.

As WIRED notes, however, this should not cause average iPhone X users alarm just yet. It takes quite a bit of time, resource, and effort to pull off what the Bkav researchers did. As such, ordinary people might not merit the kind of attention that hackers would have to invest in order to create multiple faces that work for multiple people.

On the other hand, well-known individuals with their pictures posted and plastered all over the internet could become more vulnerable. However, it’s worth repeating that none of this has been proven just yet.