Harvard students demonstrate facial recognition hack on Meta Ray-Ban glasses
Harvard students created software that integrates Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses with facial recognition to identify strangers in public and retrieve their personal information from online sources. The students demonstrated how the system could extract names, addresses, phone numbers and workplace details, though they stated the goal was to raise awareness of privacy risks rather than to criticize Meta's product.
What happened
Harvard students AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio created software that integrates Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses with the facial recognition tool Pimeyes to identify people in public.
The students streamed video from the glasses to Instagram, then used a computer program to detect faces and cross-reference images across the internet using facial recognition and data sources including voter registration databases to retrieve names, phone numbers, home addresses and relatives' names.
Reported impact
In a demonstration, the students showed how they could approach strangers on the subway and retrieve personal information including where they worked and their home address.
Index analysis
The facial recognition software ran on a separate laptop and was not executed on the glasses themselves; the students used publicly available facial recognition tools and data sources.
Meta stated that Ray-Ban glasses do not have built-in facial recognition technology and that the same technique could be applied to any camera, phone or recording device, though the glasses' discreet appearance and hands-free operation make them more practical for this purpose.
Governance controls
The students stated they would not be releasing the product and said their goal was to raise awareness about dangerous potential use-cases of facial recognition technology and to help people protect themselves against such risks.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.