Camera Hijack and Facial Recognition Evasion for Tax Fraud

Shanghai government tax office facial recognition

Perpetrators bypassed a government facial recognition authentication system using camera hijacking to commit major tax fraud. The scheme resulted in significant financial losses totaling 77 million dollars.

fix status: Fix status unknown
first report: 3 Dec 2020
last update: 3 Dec 2020

Timeline · 2

3 Dec 2020Camera Hijack Attack on Facial Recognition System
3 Dec 2020Faces are the next target for fraudsters

Sources · 2

News and write-ups

2020-12-03
Faces are the next target for fraudsters
The Wall Street Journal · wsj.com/articles/faces-are-the-next-target-for-fraudsters-11625662828

Research and catalogues

2020-12-03
Camera Hijack Attack on Facial Recognition System
MITRE ATLAS · atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0004

Titles and links belong to their publishers. The summary above is written by gcdRadar in its own words; data is CC BY-SA 4.0.

Classification

lane: Patch now
AI role: Attack on AI
categories: Adversarial evasion
severity: 4 · Confirmed real-world loss
fix status: Fix status unknown
targets: Enterprise deployment
owasp llm top 10: no entry for these categories
mitre atlas: AML.T0015 Evade AI Model AML.T0043 Craft Adversarial Data
tags: facial-recognition camera-hijack fraud
dates: happened Jan 2020 (approx.) · first reported 3 Dec 2020
record: confidence 0.95 · created 2026-10-18 06:55Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:55Z

Lane, AI role, categories and severity come from the classifier; the OWASP and ATLAS rows are derived from the categories. How these are assigned

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# Camera Hijack and Facial Recognition Evasion for Tax Fraud

https://gcdradar.vercel.app/incidents/camera-hijack-and-facial-recognition-evasion-for-tax-fraud · AIR-2020-0030 · closed 2020-12-17

- Lane: Patch now
- Severity: 4 (Confirmed real-world loss)
- Fix status: Fix status unknown
- First reported: 2020-12-03 (happened 2020-01)
- AI role: Attack on AI
- Products: Shanghai government tax office facial recognition

## Summary

Perpetrators bypassed a government facial recognition authentication system using camera hijacking to commit major tax fraud. The scheme resulted in significant financial losses totaling 77 million dollars.

## What to do

No action recorded; read the sources below and the vendor's advisory.

## Latest updates

- 2020-12-03: Faces are the next target for fraudsters (https://wsj.com/articles/faces-are-the-next-target-for-fraudsters-11625662828)
- 2020-12-03: Camera Hijack Attack on Facial Recognition System (https://atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0004)

## Sources

- 2020-12-03 MITRE ATLAS: Camera Hijack Attack on Facial Recognition System https://atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0004
- 2020-12-03 The Wall Street Journal: Faces are the next target for fraudsters https://wsj.com/articles/faces-are-the-next-target-for-fraudsters-11625662828

Verify against the vendor's advisory before changing production. Data CC BY-SA 4.0, https://gcdradar.vercel.app.

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