iPhone X Face ID: How Secure Is It?

The iPhone x released November 2017 is the latest Smartphone from Apple – one of the most successful Smartphone companies in the world. Apple is known for innovation and the iPhone x celebrates this fact by ditching the fingerprint reader for Face ID. Smartphone manufacturers usually use fingerprint recognition as the primary unlock feature and facial recognition as an alternative. The iPhone x breaks away from this norm, using facial recognition as its only biometric security feature on the new mobile device.

The iPhone x celebrates 10 years of success and what better way to celebrate than with breaking from the norm. It comes with the latest in Smartphone tech; the specs of the latest iteration from Apple are top notch. The iPhone x comes in silver and grey; 64GB and 256GB of storage, 5.8-inch Retina display, dual cameras on the back and a secondary camera at the front. The device comes with an A11 chip, runs on iOS 11, and is water and dust resistant (IP67). Basically, it’s built to deliver the best performance, promising consumers speed and efficiency.

Biometric security is still not perfect, fingerprint sensors have been hacked before and this poses a serious challenge for the tech industry. In 2013, the iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor was hacked by the German biometric hacking team CCC. Reports by security experts in 2014 also indicated that the iPhone 6 could also be unlocked like the 5s. In 2016, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Huawei Honor 7 where unlocked using a standard inkjet printer and paper. The iPhone 5s was also unlocked with this method eventually after many attempts.

The Galaxy S8, one of Samsung’s flagship devices was purportedly tricked using a picture according to a video from a Spanish Periscope user Marcianophone. However, attempts to do the same with the iPhone x Face ID has been unsuccessful. The Samsung Galaxy S8 was also tricked using an IR image taken using the night mode setting in a digital camera and contact lenses. The iPhone x has not suffered the same fate but relying only on Face ID is bold. Apple’s Face ID works better than most facial recognition tech in the market but leaving consumers with no other security options for a device worth a thousand dollars is questionable.

[Featured Image by Hadrian/Shutterstock.com]