Irish politician Matt Carthy hacked by own children

Image: mediaphotos / getty

Hacking facial-recognition systems is so easy a kid could do it. 

One Irish politician found this out the hard way when he discovered the reason he kept finding his laptop battery drained. It turns out his kids were using his campaign flyers — prominently featuring a picture of his face — to bypass the facial-recognition lock on his computer. 

“So, I was wondering why the battery on my laptop was running down every time I left it at home,” Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy, who represents the Midlands Northwest constituency, tweeted Tuesday. “Turns out the kids have been using my election leaflets to get through the facial recognition lock…”

Yeah, not exactly elite hacker moves, but effective nevertheless. 

This is of course not the first time we’ve seen supposedly sophisticated facial-recognition systems defeated with a simple photo. Just last summer Mashable managed to trick the OnePlus 6’s face unlock with a printed mask. In general, experts consider this form of biometric security to be a questionable method of securing your phone or computer at best. 

Carthy, however, has mixed feelings about getting owned. 

“I’m not sure whether to be proud by the wit or concerned by the sneakiness,” he wrote of his children. 

And while what the politician thinks of his offsprings’ ingenuity is his business, we do have one suggestion for him: start using an alphanumeric passphrase.