''Fawkes'' is a facial image cloaking software created by the SAND (Security, Algorithms, Networking and Data) Laboratory of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. It is a free tool that is available as a standalone executable.Ledford, B 2021, ''An Assessment of Image-Cloaking Techniques Against Automated Face Recognition for Biometric Privacy,'' Masters Thesis, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne Florida, viewed 27 July 27 2022, https://repository.lib.fit.edu/handle/11141/3478. The software creates small alterations in images using

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

to protect the images from being recognized and matched by

facial recognition software A facial recognition system is a technology capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and wo ...

. The goal of the Fawkes program is to enable individuals to protect their own privacy from large data collection. As of May 2022 Fawkes v1.0 has surpassed 840,000 downloads. Eventually the SAND Laboratory hopes to implement the software on a larger scale to combat unwarranted facial recognition software.

History

The Fawkes program was named after the fictional protagonist from the movie and comic ''

V for Vendetta ''V for Vendetta'' is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd (with additional art by Tony Weare). Initially published between 1982 and 1985 in black and white as an ongoing serial in the British anthol ...

,'' who drew inspiration from historical figure

Guy Fawkes Guy Fawkes (; 13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated ...

. The Fawkes proposal was initially presented at a USENIX Security conference in August 2020 where it received approval and was launched shortly after. The most recent version available for download, Fawkes v1.0, was released in April 2021 and is still being updated in 2022. The founding team is led by Emily Wenger and Shawn Shan, PhD students at the

. Additional support from Jiayun Zhang and Huiying Li, with faculty advisors Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng, contributed to the creation of the software. The team cites nonconsensual data collection, specifically done by such companies as Clearwater AI, as being the prime inspiration behind the creation of Fawkes.

Techniques

The methods that Fawkes uses can be identified as similar to

adversarial machine learning Adversarial machine learning is the study of the attacks on machine learning algorithms, and of the defenses against such attacks. A recent survey exposes the fact that practitioners report a dire need for better protecting machine learning syste ...

. This method trains a facial recognition software using already altered images. This results in the software not being able to match the altered image with the actual image as it does not recognize them as the same image. Fawkes also uses data poisoning attacks, which change the data set used to train certain deep learning models. Fawkes utilizes two types of data poisoning techniques: clean label attacks and model corruption attacks. The creators of Fawkes identifies that using sybil images can increase the effectiveness of their software against recognition softwares. Sybil images are images that do not match the person they are attributed to. This confuses the facial recognition software and leads to misidientification which also helps the efficacy of image cloaking. Privacy preserving machine learning uses techniques similar to the Fawkes software but opts for differentially private model training which helps to keep information in the data set private.

Applications

Fawkes image cloaking can be used on images and apps that we use everyday. However, the efficacy of the software wanes if there are cloaked and uncloaked images that the facial recognition software can utilize. The image cloaking software has been tested on high-powered facial recognition software with varied results. A similar facial cloaking software to Fawkes is calle
LowKey
LowKey also alters images on a visual level, but these alterations are much more noticeable compared to the Fawkes software.

References

category:privacy software {{ai-stub

History

Techniques

Applications

See Also

References