Can face anti-spoofing countermeasures work in a real world scenario?

Abstract

User authentication is an important step to protect information and in this field face biometrics is advantageous. Face biometrics is natural, easy to use and less human-invasive. Unfortunately, recent work has revealed that face biometrics is vulnerable to spoofing attacks using low-tech equipments. This article assesses how well existing face anti-spoofing countermeasures can work in a more realistic condition. Experiments carried out with two freely available video databases (Replay Attack Database and CASIA Face Anti-Spoofing Database) show low generalization and possible database bias in the evaluated countermeasures. To generalize and deal with the diversity of attacks in a real world scenario we introduce two strategies that show promising results.