Injection Attack (biometrics)

An injectionattack in biometricsis a type of spoofing attack where fake or manipulated biometric data is fed directly into a system’s sensor or feature extraction pipeline to bypass authentication. Instead of presenting a physical trait (like a face or fingerprint), attackers use stored images, digital templates, or synthetic biometric samples to trick the system into granting access. These attacks exploit weaknesses in sensor input validation and data handling, making them difficult to detect without proper safeguards.For banks, fintechs, government agencies, and healthcare providers, injection attacks present serious risks, including account takeover, data theft, and fraud. Preventing them requires layered defenses such as liveness detection, challenge-response protocols, secure sensor design, and cryptographic protection of biometric templates. With the rise of AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic identities, defending against injection attacks has become critical to maintaining trust in biometric authentication systems.