Press release from The University of Electro-Communications: fooling deepfake detectors with an optical filter
The University of Electro-Communications issued a press release titled “Fooling deepfake detectors with an optical filter: a new attack and its countermeasure,” introducing the results of our USENIX WOOT 2026 paper “Breaking Infrared Recapture Detection” — a collaboration between the Sugawara group at UEC and the University of Florida.
The release explains how a hot mirror, an optical filter that transmits visible light while reflecting infrared light arriving at a particular angle, can defeat recapture detection based on an infrared depth sensor, and proposes a countermeasure that uses a dual-pixel sensor to perform both imaging and depth measurement in visible light.
[Paper]
Tetsu Ishizue, Sara Rampazzi, Takeshi Sugawara, “Breaking Infrared Recapture Detection: Optical-Synthesis Attacks and Depth-Aware In-Sensor Countermeasures,” USENIX WOOT 2026 Conference on Offensive Technologies, Baltimore, MD, USA, pp. 189-209, August 2026.