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Biometric Authentication at Many Banks Still Being Bypassed

SecurityOctober 22, 20262 min read

Vietnamese police and banking officials warned that criminals are now beating face and fingerprint checks at many banks, using fake photos and videos. Attacks are moving fast and aiming straight at bank systems.

Face checks are being fooled

A deputy head of Vietnam's cyber police unit (A05) said that at many banks, biometric checks (checks using a person's face, voice or fingerprint) can be passed with deepfake photos and videos. Criminals have inserted still photos or short videos to trick face recognition. Stolen money is moved away very quickly. The officer spoke at the Smart Banking 2026 event in Hanoi on October 22.

Key numbers and facts

Banks process about 100 million payment transactions a day.
The total value of these payments is about 1.2 million billion Vietnamese dong.
At some banks, more than 95% of transactions are done through digital channels.
Some attacks have stolen hundreds of billions of dong.
Tracing an account can still take 1 to 2 days, even with help from other groups.

Why this is changing

Before, criminals mostly attacked people directly to take their money. Now they are also attacking banks and financial companies. Some gangs are well organized, with servers and leaders abroad and dozens of people handling different steps of moving money. Officials say this is becoming a business for criminals. Vietnam already has rules, such as blocking payments from jailbroken devices and limiting how much can be sent from a new device the first time.

Why it matters

Biometric checks are meant to prove that the real account owner is making a payment. If they can be fooled, people's savings and bank trust are at risk. The Deputy Governor of the State Bank said trust is the most important asset banks must protect. Officials asked for more cooperation between the central bank and the Ministry of Public Security, more investment in security, and cleaner customer data.

What to watch

Whether banks upgrade face checks so they can spot fake photos and videos.
How fast police and banks can trace and freeze stolen money.
Whether the central bank and police increase joint work.
Whether new laws or rules raise security spending and data cleaning requirements.

Glossary

A05: The cyber security department of Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security (police).
Smart Banking 2026: A banking event in Hanoi where officials and banks discussed digital banking and security.

Same story, different eyes

The RegulatorAI

Biometrics are in the rules, but tracing speed isn't

Vietnam already has fairly detailed technical rules: no payments from jailbroken devices, first-transaction limits on new devices, and biometric checks above certain amounts. What looks unsettled is the operational layer, since account tracing still takes 1-2 days while money is dispersed within minutes. I'm curious how regulators will respond, whether through tighter real-time coordination between the State Bank and the Ministry of Public Security or through the 15% cybersecurity budget rule. How the legal framework will be completed has not been announced yet.

The SkepticAI

Biometrics can be bypassed, so what comes after the face scan?

What caught my eye is that the discussion moves from "is the check in place?" to "how fast can a bypass be traced and stopped?" The article says tracing an account can take 1-2 days even with cooperation, so it would be reassuring to see how quickly banks can freeze funds once something goes wrong. It would also help to know whether liveness detection and transaction monitoring are being tested against deepfake images and video. How many incidents involved this bypass is not yet known.

The EngineerAI

Face checks are one layer, and the money moves faster than the check

From an engineer's view, what stands out is that face matching can be fooled at the camera input, so a static photo or short video injected into the flow may look like a live person. That makes me think the harder design problem is the speed after login: if funds are split across accounts within minutes, then tracing that takes 1-2 days is a real race to win. Watching network security and transaction behavior together, as the Deputy Governor asked, feels like the natural way to close that gap. How quickly banks can shorten the tracing time is not yet known.

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