Countermeasures against bias and spoofing in modern facial recognition systems

Adedapo I, Adeniyi and Odejobi, Olushola and Taiwo, Taiwo (2025) Countermeasures against bias and spoofing in modern facial recognition systems. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 25 (1). pp. 1914-1930. ISSN 2581-9615

Facial recognition systems (FRS) have become integral to modern security, authentication, and surveillance applications, driven by advancements in computer vision and deep learning. These systems promise unparalleled accuracy and efficiency, revolutionizing industries ranging from law enforcement to personal device security. However, their widespread adoption has exposed critical vulnerabilities, particularly bias and spoofing attacks. Bias in facial recognition stems from imbalanced training datasets, leading to disparities in recognition accuracy across gender, ethnicity, and age groups. These biases raise ethical concerns, compromise system reliability, and undermine trust in automated decision-making processes. Spoofing attacks, involving techniques such as mask-based or image-based impersonation, exploit system weaknesses to bypass security measures, posing significant risks to sensitive applications like financial transactions and border control. This research explores countermeasures to address these challenges, presenting a dual approach combining data-centric and algorithmic strategies. To mitigate bias, techniques such as dataset augmentation, adversarial debiasing, and fairness-aware learning are examined, ensuring equitable performance across diverse user groups. Anti-spoofing measures, including liveness detection, multispectral imaging, and adversarial training, are discussed to enhance system robustness against impersonation attempts. Additionally, the study highlights the role of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) in fostering transparency and accountability in FRS. By integrating these countermeasures into system design, developers can build facial recognition solutions that are both secure and inclusive, balancing performance with ethical considerations. This research provides a comprehensive framework for enhancing the reliability and trustworthiness of modern facial recognition technologies.