Too Little Too Late, UIDAI?

The UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) has now added an extra layer of security for Aadhaar holders by introducing face recognition in “Fusion” with fingerprints and Iris. The Face Recognition mechanism will act as another layer of verification alongside fingerprints, OTP and Iris authentication.

To make things convenient, UIDAI commented that it will be using the photo of the consumers that was captured at the time of Aadhar enrolment. The facial recognition will give an additional choice for people having trouble with their fingerprints and iris authentication, which is supposed to go live by July this year.

How secure is facial recognition?
In November 2017, a group of cyber security researcher were able to crack iPhone’s facial recognition technology just by using a $150 mask. The cybersecurity firm posted a video on their official blog which showed that they had found a way to hack Face ID by using a composite mask of 3-D-printed plastic, silicone, makeup, and simple paper cutouts, which in combination tricked an iPhone X into unlocking.

Now, given that Apple invested a bug sum to develop the infrared based specialised hardware to capture a 3D image of a person’s face, it’s dicey how it would compare to the 3-5MP cameras used at the time of enrolment.

Ankush Johar, director at Infosec Ventures, said: "2 factor is good but the face is a bad factor for authentication. Although adding an extra layer of security for Aadhar card holders seems to be a good initiative, adding facial recognition might not do much good as not only it isn’t too difficult to replicate as compared to other biometrics but also the major problem lies in the source of the images used as the authentication mechanism.

"The photographs captured nearly half a decade back with an extremely low resolution camera stands hardly any chance given that hackers were able to bypass even the 3D face model recognition developed by one of the biggest tech pioneers.

"The second problem is not only the security of facial recognition but the accessibility of the technology. Do you look like yourself on your passport? Nobody does. Why? Because the image is old and you have changed since the time it was captured. The biggest benefit of facial recognition is that you can change it while your physical attributes change and this sole feature isn't available with UDAI’s mechanism. The base authentication token is pretty old and mainly one cannot update it.

"This move by UIDAI, as great as it may be, might have just arrived too little too late. If originally. the faces of the consumers had been captured with at least a high-definition camera, if not an infrared-based 3D facial recognition system, deploying it as an authentication of Aadhaar had been much easier, secure and reliable."