Biometric Encyclopedia

Presentation Attack

A presentation attack can be used to try and spoof a biometric face authentication system or at onboarding to create a fraudulent account. A criminal will attempt a presentation attack by pretending to be someone else so they can gain access to their accounts or privileges. 

There are a variety of presentation attacks that criminals deploy to try and gain unlawful access to a user’s account or privileges. As well as physically attempting to impersonate a genuine user, presentation attacks can involve an artifact being held up to a user-facing camera. 

Presentation attacks can take the form of physical objects –  from a simple photo of a person’s face to a highly sophisticated and expensive mask. They can also involve digitally created images or videos presented on a screen and then shown to the camera.

Fortunately, presentation attack detection (PAD) enables these attacks to be identified and prevented. Liveness detection is an important part of PAD. A biometric authentication system uses liveness to verify that there is a live physical person at the end of an internet connection.