Android's Face Unlock security fooled by photograph?

The Face Unlock security feature in Google's Ice Cream Sandwich OS can reportedly be tricked into unlocking a phone by showing it a digital image of the user's face.

The Face Unlock feature raised a few eyebrows when it was unveiled along with the rest of the Ice Cream Sandwich edition of Android. Using your smartphone's front-facing camera, the phone side-steps the need for passwords or traditional unlock screens by scanning the user's face to identify its owner from Joe Public, and only granting access to the face it recognises.

At the time, cynics were asking how an Ice Cream Sandwich phone would be able to tell the difference between a real-world face and a photograph, although Google rebuffed the idea that the system could be so simply exploited. However, a new video that's cropped up on YouTube suggests that Face Unlock might be more vulnerable than Google are willing to admit, with one user unlocking his ICS-powered mobile with a picture taken of himself on a Samsung Galaxy Note.

While there are accusations in the YouTube comments that the uploader could have set up his phone deliberately to unlock when presented with a 2D picture of himself, we imagine the experiment is being busily recreated at Google HQ as we speak. Fake or legit? Check out the video for yourself below.

ASUS Announces P9X79 WAS (LGA 2011) Motherboard for Workstations

ASUS today announced its new workstation motherboard P9X79 WAS which would support Intel’s upcoming Sandy Bridge-E Processors. The motherboard would be suitable for professional workstation usage while the other Rampage IV Extreme, ASUS P9X79 and Sabertooth X79 would be aimed towards the Consumer market.


The P9X79 WAS would be based on the X79 Chipset featuring the LGA 2011 Socket which would support Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E, More specifically the i7 3900 Series. The motherboard features eight DDR3 memory modules allowing Quad channel memory interface and Six PCI-e 3.0 Memory slots allowing for Quad Way SLI and CrossfireX Support.

Storage includes 4 SATA 6Gbps and 4 SATA 3GBps ports while connectivity ports include four USB 3.0 and 13 USB 2.0. Backpanel I/O includes Dual Gigabit network, FireWire and 7.1 audio.

The release of the motherboard is expected next week along with Sandy Bridge-E platform launch on November 14th.

Once and for all: Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3 - Who won the FPS crown?

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, after close to a year's worth of teasing, promising and fair bit of showboating Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and EA's Battlefield 3 are both in the wild. But which one delivers?

EA has made it known through its advertising campaign and numerous confrontational soundbites that it's aiming for Call of Duty's throne with DICE's latest shooter.

Meanwhile Activision has observed a quiet confidence in its genre-leading franchise, holding an assured silence that some would posit borders on arrogance.

Battlefield 3 reached European shores on October 28 and - on the same day - EA revealed DICE's shooter got off to "a fantastic start on sales and quality". He wasn't kidding.

EA CEO John Riccitiello said during an earnings it had shipped 10 million units to retail and was already receiving reorders. Later that week Battlefield 3 was declared to be 'the fastest-selling EA game ever'.
Critics gave the game a very warm reception and the generally positive reviews pushed its Metacritic review average to a high of 93%.

Although Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has only been official available for a few days now (close to a week unofficially courtesy of a few cheeky retailers) industry analysts have said Infinity Ward's shooter is expected to move between 5.5 and 6 million copies during its first 24 hours on sale.

Like it's opposition MW3 has gone down a treat with critics, with the majority of reviews landing around the 9/10 mark.

Gamers however haven't been as kind and flocked to review aggregator Metacritic and submitted hundreds of scathing reviews, dragging its user review average down to rock bottom. Some would say unfairly so.

If numbers are the metric of success the obvious answer is both games are huge success' in their own right, but what we're interested in is your opinion, how you feel about both games individually and relative to each other.

Do you think Battlefield is everything EA claimed it to be? Has Activision delivered another title worthy of the crown? Which out of the two do you expect to be playing months from now? Let us know in the comments below.