When Apple announced the iPhone X earlier this year, it promised its new unlocking mechanism, Face ID, was twice as secure as its predecessor, Touch ID. The company said it had tested it six ways from Sunday — including using masks — and that unless you had an identical twin running around, the chances of somebody breaking into your phone were “one in a million.” This week, Bkav says they’re the one. The Vietnamese cybersecurity firm claims they’ve successfully hacked an iPhone X using a mask.
The mask, a combination of silicon, paper, fabric, and 3-D printouts that looks like something out of a low-budget horror film, cost $150, according to Bkav. The firm posted a video in which they claim to break into the phone, and a blog post answering questions about how they did it. “The recognition mechanism is not as strict as you think, Apple seems to rely too much on Face ID’s AI. We just need a half face to create the mask. It was even simpler than we ourselves had thought.” Of course, this is just one firm’s claim and the technique video hasn’t been confirmed or replicated by anybody else. (Wired tried and failed to defeat Face ID using masks earlier this fall.) Don’t go panicking just yet.
