The face that unlocked a thousand Androids

In the previous post I blamed Android's security woes on the device vendors' lack of motivation to make their devices secure despite Google's efforts to maintain security. If the latest reports of a hole in Android's face recognition mechanism are correct this is a breach that falls squarely into Google's lap.

Android 4.0 (code named Ice Cream Sandwich) includes Face Unlock, a feature which, if activated, allows the owner to unlock a device just by presenting his or her face to the device's camera. Cool, right?

Malaysian cell phone blog SoyaCincau posted the following video on youtube which shows that it's possible to use a photograph of the owner's face to unlock the phone.

Android, CSS, Blu-Ray: (Sub)Standard Security pt. 4

Before wrapping up this series of posts on why standardized security systems fail let's do a quick run on a few more systems.