Morph Creation and Vulnerability of Face Recognition Systems to Morphing

Face recognition in controlled environments is nowadays considered rather reliable, and very good accuracy levels can be achieved by state-of-the-art systems in controlled scenarios. However, even under these desirable conditions, digital image alterations can severely affect the recognition performance. In particular, several studies show that automatic face recognition systems are very sensitive to the so-called face morphing attack, where face images of two individuals are mixed to produce a new face image containing facial features of both subjects. Face morphing represents nowadays a big security threat particularly in the context of electronic identity documents because it can be successfully exploited for criminal intents, for instance to fool Automated Border Control (ABC) systems thus overcoming security controls at the borders. This chapter will describe the face morphing process, in an overview ranging from the traditional techniques based on geometry warping and texture blending to the most recent and innovative approaches based on deep neural networks. Moreover, the sensitivity of state-of-the-art face recognition algorithms to the face morphing attack will be assessed using morphed images of different quality generated using various morphing methods to identify possible factors influencing the probability of success of the attack.