Vietnamese security firm claims a $150 mask beat iPhone X Face ID; Apple is skeptical and Bkav shared no details

A week after the iPhone X shipped, Vietnamese research firm Bkav said it had defeated Apple's Face ID with a replica mask built from a consumer 3D printer, a hand-sculpted nose, ordinary 2D printing, and a custom skin surface. Total cost: $150. The evidence is a video. Bkav has not shared its research with Apple, and Apple told TechCrunch it is skeptical of the claim.

The most obvious way to fake it would be to train Face ID on the mask before presenting the real face. Bkav says it applied "the strict rule of 'absolutely no passcode'" while crafting the mask, and it is unclear how many attempts it made before hitting the iPhone X's five-failure lockout. Wired and Cloudflare had already tried far more elaborate masks, including eyeholes for real eye movement and thousands of individually inserted eyebrow hairs, and failed to unlock the phone. Bkav concedes the attack does not scale to normal people, writing that "potential targets shall not be regular users, but billionaires, leaders of major corporations, nation leaders and agents like FBI."