OnePlus 6 Test Reveals A Significant Problem

While the OnePlus 6 camera may be delivering decent picture quality, it looks like there’s one area where it’s significantly less proficient, and it could put users’ privacy at risk.

According to Twitter user @rikvduijn, the OnePlus 6 Face Unlock feature can be defeated with a simple printed photo of the user’s face, as demonstrated in this video:

The Twitter video is captioned:

I printed my face to unlock my OnePlus 6 for the lulz... it worked  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

While the OnePlus 6 lacks the specialized hardware used to provide Apple’s ‘Face ID’ unlocking system, I would have expected it to be able to withstand such a trivial attack.

I reached out to OnePlus for comment and received the following response from the UK PR team:


You can read more about how OnePlus has implemented Face Unlock in this official forum post where it clearly states that technologies are in place specifically to reduce the chance that someone will try to unlock your phone using a picture.

The full list of checks has been kept secret for security reasons, but some specific methods are mentioned:

The process attempts to make sure the presented face is actually you by measuring facial features and distances between them. It also attempts to analyze the ‘3D aspect’ of the subject.

To prevent someone using a picture of your face displayed on another phone, the Face Unlock feature will check for reflected light rather than light emitted from a screen, while also checking for giveaways such as screen reflections or rectangular screen frames around the picture.

The feature will also deactivate itself after five unsuccessful attempts, requiring the use of a password or fingerprint instead. This is to mitigate against an attacker using multiple pictures in an attempt to bypass the Face Unlock system.

While the authenticity of @rik’s video can’t be proven, the response from OnePlus stops well short of denying the possibility. However, it should be noted that fellow Forbes contributor Ben Sin was unable to defeat Face Unlock on last year’s OnePlus 5T despite repeated attempts.

For now, I’d recommend following the stated advice and sticking to one of the more secure methods of locking your handset.


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