Researchers have revived a 19th-century stage trick to test modern face recognition. The 'Ghost Attack' uses the Pepper's Ghost illusion—a technique once used to make 'ghosts' appear on theatre stages—to create a physical attack against biometric systems. According to the arXiv paper, this forgotten optical gimmick exposes vulnerabilities in face recognition.
The authors describe the attack as physical, meaning it relies on real-world optics rather than digital manipulation. The abstract does not give details on success rates or which systems were tested, so the scope of the vulnerability remains unclear.
This is a single preprint with a short abstract, so there are no other sources to compare. The main takeaway is that even old, low-tech illusions can still challenge state-of-the-art security.