Face Unlock Tricked: Man Unlocks Galaxy Nexus Using Picture, Exposes Android Flaw (VIDEO)

The Face Unlock feature in Android 4.0 for the Galaxy Nexus is pretty darn cool -- it unlocks the phone using facial recognition software so you don't need to type in a pesky code each time you want to use the phone.

But as one blogger pointed out, probably much to the chagrin of Google, you don't even need your pesky face to unlock the phone. Your face in-the-flesh, that is.

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW

Answering a tweet from a curious reader that asks if a printed picture can fool the phone, SoyaCincau of the eponymous blog shows us just how easy it is to, well, fool the phone. And he didn't even need a printed picture.

He uses a digital picture taken from a Galaxy Note, and by simply showing the Galaxy Nexus's camera the picture, he's able to unlock the phone.

The video has gone viral, and he's updated the YouTube description to address the question of whether or not he programmed the phone to recognize his picture, not his actual face:

While some of you think that it is a trick and I had set the Galaxy Nexus up to recognise the picture, I assure you that the device was set up to recognise my face. I have a few people there watching me do the video and if any one of them is watching this video I hope you can confirm that this test is 100% legit.

With your face literally all over the internet (think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), this could be a potentially serious flaw in Android 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich and unveiled last month in Hong Kong.

Of course, all this would require the person who's trying to break into your mobile to know your identity, so we suppose it's not something worth worrying about if you lose your phone and your identity is no way tied to it (i.e. you don't have your name on the phone).

TheNextWeb's Matt Brian notes that Tim Bray, Android Developer Advocate at Google, denied via Twitter that a photo could be used to break into the phone when the issue was raised last month. He has not sent out a tweet regarding this video, but it will be interesting to see how he (and Google) address the potential issue.

WATCH: Galaxy Nexus Face Unlock Tricked:

Take a look at the rest of Android 4.0's awesome features (below).

Comments

[WarstoryBot]

03:31 AM on 11/17/2011

Nobody at Google thought of this?

[PhillyKing]

10:04 AM on 11/14/2011

I swear... the cooler the new features, the more insecure the device.. goes for both Android and IOS... these guys need to hire more "security" testers... get the good ones... the ones that would make the phone so secure that no on e could use it... then work backwards from that and meet in the middle... right now both Google and Apple seem focused solely on making the phones "cooler"...

[KarateKid]

09:17 AM on 11/14/2011

Android phones to users: "You all look alike to me."

[Bishop Coxcomb]

02:42 PM on 11/14/2011

Apple phones to users: "Your money all looks the same to me, Muahahahahahahah."

[KarateKid]

02:52 PM on 11/14/2011

My comment was on topic. mua ha ha ha ha ha ha !!

[pipajersey]

08:59 PM on 11/13/2011

Michael oher jersey youth, Ryan Fitzpatrick Jersey, Mario manningham jersey kids,

[Tony McDay]

08:05 PM on 11/13/2011

another non-story. slow news day here in HP Tech..

[NYDennis30]

10:47 AM on 11/13/2011

And to think, I was going to tape a high quality picture of myself to the back of the phone in case I forget what I look like. If I lose a picture of myself and the phone at the same time then the person who finds both can have the info in my phone.

If this is the biggest complaint with this phone then it will be the phone I will have for a long time.

[AstorsCatfish]

12:14 AM on 11/13/2011

Sometimes what H P calls news........

"Oh my god!!! There is a security flaw in the new iPone!!! It has a setting!!!"
"Mind Bending News - The iPhone's battery runs down quicker than we expected!!!'
"Hold on to Your Hats!!!! The Latest Droid's Facial Recognition Can Recognize a Face!!! Even if it's Just a Picture!!!'

If I knew their editor I'd send him flowers -"Sorry you're having such a slow day with no real news."

[Will Snyder]

09:36 PM on 11/12/2011

and seriously, it's face unlock. Of course it's going to unlock with a picture of your face. It's meant as a low level deterrent, not a replacement for dynamic level 3 encryption. Jeez...

[KarateKid]

07:59 PM on 11/12/2011

Fandroids don't come to these blogs to extoll the virtues of the Android based phones. They only come here to bash Apple. Look at the click count in the Apple battery issue article v.s. this one.

[MB1East]

05:33 PM on 11/12/2011

If this happened to Apple it would have been a massive news issue. But it's just Google, so nobody seems to care.

[Draekia]

09:11 PM on 11/12/2011

Including the fandroids -- or should I say, Apple haters, since that's what they really are.

[NerdyStudent]

12:14 AM on 11/14/2011

Engaging in the fanboy wars isn't open minded...

[twninja]

04:19 PM on 11/12/2011

haha i was totally thinking about that when they announced face lock feature. Same as finger print lock, if you wana break into something bad enough, there is always a way.

[Thomas River]

10:09 AM on 11/12/2011

ROFLMAO. 200 anti-apple zealots__bashing the phone and it's owners on the battery thread. 11 comments here. And you puppets_wonder why H P likes to run Apple articles.

[Will Snyder]

09:32 PM on 11/12/2011

um....just so you know, people are laughing at the Apple battery situation because for years "at least I don't have to carry around spare batteries " was the pride and joy statement of isheep. Now, they just wish they could....

[Thomas River]

05:51 AM on 11/13/2011

Um...just so you know, that's pretty much b s. the anti-apple folks are notorious_at fabricating_insults that were never spoken by anyone else. You'd swear_every one of them were Republicans.

[NerdyStudent]

12:17 AM on 11/14/2011

Look, I knew the second I opened this story it would be riddled with Apple fanboys with a chip on their shoulder, as is the case with every Google/Microsoft story. This is equally true of non-Apple consumers, when the story happens to be about Apple.

So, really? Why don't you class up a little.

[hypnotoad72]

08:28 AM on 11/12/2011

I need to find the previous article on the face unlock... mostly out of egoism, I'm sure I openly questioned the possibility of using a photograph to unlock it, assuming the resolution was sufficient... (which means, for every other face-detection system, like on laptop computers, I'd bet real money the same problem exists... one would hope the people designing similar technology for more "valuable" entities thought about this possible drawback as well... And if a web-size image can crack this, so can your driver's license or other ID card with your photo on it. How cool is that...

[NerdyStudent]

12:19 AM on 11/14/2011

My face unlock on my laptop actually works remarkably well...given that I'm of Lebanese heritage one would think it would have some trouble with the varying shades of brown on my face...but no, it works...

[Carla Rae H]

08:18 AM on 11/12/2011

Facial recognition software amazes me. It's kind of weird to me when I upload pictures to a social media site and the site is able to know who is who in every picture before I even tag them. Kind of freaky in a way.

[DRaymond]

02:21 AM on 11/12/2011

This flaw was 'discovered'? Google admitted it when they announced the feature. And considering the number of people who put no unlock code on their phone at all this is certainly an improvement.

[hypnotoad72]

08:28 AM on 11/12/2011

That would be the ultimate gem - Google announcing the flaw with the feature. I'll be sticking with a nice long PIN for now... (FWIW)

[Draekia]

09:12 PM on 11/12/2011

Google denied it. Read the article.