Independent Researcher & Consultant
The Kojo Nnamdi Show at WAMU
Washington, DC | August 22, 2012
I discussed facial recognition software with Laura Donohue, a law professor at Georgetown University, on The Kojo Nnamdi Show. We discussed how the technology works and the implications of its increasing quality and availability.
There’s been a lot of attention around the Israeli facial recognition startup Face.com. They, amongst other things, make a mobile app called “KLIK” which lets users tag their friend’s faces in real-time, as they walk down the street. Just today, they announced that they’re being acquired by Facebook for $100M.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a different kind of excitement surrounding the startup. I found an extremely basic vulnerability in the which the app allows access to other user’s KLIK information, including private ‘authentication tokens’ (i.e keys) for user’s Facebook & Twitter accounts (KLIK relies on Facebook to use the app).
Face.com essentially allowed anyone to hijack a KLIK user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to get access to photos and social graph (which enables ‘face prints’), even if that information isn’t public.
Ashkan Soltani