Face-Unlock

Face-Unlock is a PAM-based facial authentication system for Linux. It hooks into the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) stack to provide face recognition everywhere — sudo, GDM login, polkit, TTY login, and any other PAM-aware service. No cloud, no proprietary APIs, no daemons. Just your webcam, dlib, and a few OpenCV frames.

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Features

• PAM Integration — plugs into any PAM service: sudo, gdm-password, polkit-1, login, and more
• Liveness Detection — blink-based liveness via Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) using dlib's facial landmarks
• HOG + CNN Detectors — choose between fast HOG or more accurate CNN-based face detection
• Rate Limiting & Lockout — file-based per-user rate limiting with configurable thresholds
• Secure Encoding Storage — face encodings stored as numpy arrays with HMAC-SHA256 integrity signatures (no pickle, fixing CWE-502)
• Notification + Choice Dialogs — on failed auth, a desktop notification appears with a "Try Face Again" / "Use Password" dialog
• Headless Mode — works on servers and SSH sessions where no display is available
• Automatic Session Detection — detects user displays, Wayland/X11 sessions, and greeter processes (GDM, LightDM, SDDM, etc.)
• Audit Logging — all auth events logged to syslog with LOG_AUTH facility
• Configurable — all parameters adjustable via /etc/face-unlock/config.ini

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Linux (Debian/Ubuntu-based recommended)
• Python 3.8+
• A webcam

Installation

git clone https://github.com/mohit31kumar/face-unlock.git
cd face-unlock
sudo ./install.sh

The installer will:

1. Install system dependencies (cmake, dlib, OpenCV, zenity, libnotify)
2. Install Python packages
3. Copy library files to /usr/local/lib/face-unlock/
4. Create wrapper scripts in /usr/local/bin/
5. Generate a default config at /etc/face-unlock/config.ini
6. Generate a secret HMAC key at /etc/face-unlock/secret.key
7. Patch PAM configuration for gdm-password, sudo, polkit-1, login, and common-auth

Enroll a User

sudo face-unlock-enroll <your-username>

Follow the on-screen instructions — look at the camera while it captures 5 face samples.

Test

# Quick diagnostic
sudo face-unlock-test

# Test recognition against an enrolled user
sudo face-unlock-test --user <your-username>

# Test liveness (blink) detection
sudo face-unlock-test --liveness

# Test the auth choice dialog
sudo face-unlock-test --dialog

Try It

# This should trigger face auth via PAM
sudo -i

Toggle Authentication

# Enable face-unlock in all PAM files
sudo face-unlock enable

# Disable face-unlock from all PAM files
sudo face-unlock disable

# Set face as the default (tried first, password fallback)
sudo face-unlock default on

# Set password as the default (tried first, face fallback)
sudo face-unlock default off

# Check current state
sudo face-unlock status

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Usage

CLI Reference

Command	Description
face-unlock enroll <user>	Enroll a user interactively
face-unlock list	List enrolled users and encoding counts
face-unlock remove <user>	Remove a user's encodings
face-unlock test	Run diagnostics
face-unlock config	Edit config in $EDITOR
face-unlock enable	Enable face-unlock in PAM files
face-unlock disable	Disable face-unlock from PAM files
face-unlock default on/off	Set face-first or password-first auth order
face-unlock status	Show current PAM state for all files

Enrollment Options

sudo face-unlock-enroll <username> [options]

Options:
  --headless        Auto-capture frames without GUI preview
  --cnn             Use CNN detector (more accurate, slower)
  --device PATH     Specify camera device (e.g., /dev/video1)
  --samples N       Number of face samples (default: 5)
  --jitters N       Encoding jitter iterations (default: 5)

Testing Options

sudo face-unlock-test [options]

Options:
  --user USER      Test recognition for an enrolled user
  --liveness       Test blink-based liveness detection
  --dialog         Test notification + choice dialog
  --device PATH    Specify camera device
  --cnn            Use CNN detector
  --timeout SECS   Capture timeout (default: 10)

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Configuration

All settings are in /etc/face-unlock/config.ini. Edit with:

sudo face-unlock config

[core]

Key	Default	Description
use_cnn	false	Use CNN detector (slower, more accurate)
timeout	5	Total auth attempt timeout in seconds
retries	3	Number of capture retries before falling back
disabled	false	Disable face auth globally
show_auth_dialog	true	Show "Try Again / Use Password" dialog on failure
auto_capture_timeout	3	Seconds to wait for a face before auto-capturing
dialog_timeout	10	Seconds before the choice dialog auto-dismisses

[camera]

Key	Default	Description
device_path	(empty)	Camera device path (auto-detected if empty)
frame_width	640	Capture frame width
frame_height	480	Capture frame height
max_height	480	Maximum height for face detection

[recognition]

Key	Default	Description
tolerance	0.55	Face match tolerance (lower = stricter)
num_jitters	5	Encoding jitter iterations
liveness_blinks	1	Number of blinks required for liveness
liveness_timeout	3	Seconds to wait for blinks

[ratelimit]

Key	Default	Description
max_attempts	5	Failed attempts before lockout
lockout_minutes	5	Lockout duration in minutes

[storage]

Key	Default	Description
encodings_dir	/etc/face-unlock/encodings	Directory for face encoding files

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How It Works

PAM Service (sudo, GDM, polkit, ...)
       │
       ▼
  pam_exec.so ──► face-unlock-auth
       │
       ▼
  authenticate.py
       │
       ├── Rate-limit check (file-based, per-user)
       ├── Load encodings (numpy + HMAC verification)
       ├── Open camera (config-driven resolution)
       ├── Liveness check (EAR blink detection via dlib landmarks)
       ├── Capture face frame (auto or guided)
       ├── Detect face (HOG or CNN)
       ├── Compute 128-d encoding
       ├── Compare against enrolled encodings (cosine similarity)
       │
       ├── Success ✔  ──► PAM_SUCCESS
       │
       └── Failure ✘  ──► notify-send + zenity dialog
                            │
                            ├── "Try Again" ──► retry capture
                            └── "Use Password" ──► skip to password prompt

Architecture

Module	Role
authenticate.py	PAM auth entry point, orchestrates the full flow
face_engine.py	Face detection (HOG/CNN), 128-d encoding, EAR computation
camera.py	OpenCV video capture, headless-safe GUI wrappers
storage.py	HMAC-signed numpy encoding storage, username validation
config.py	INI config reader with typed getters and syslog fallback
session.py	DISPLAY/WAYLAND session detection via /proc scanning
dialog.py	Desktop notification + zenity choice dialog
enroll.py	Interactive enrollment with GUI and headless modes
test.py	Diagnostics for camera, recognition, liveness, dialog
pam.py	PAM file manipulation (enable/disable/toggle auth order)
cli.py	Management CLI (enroll, list, remove, test, config, enable, disable, default, status)

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Security

• No pickle deserialization — legacy .pkl files are rejected; encodings use numpy.save/numpy.load only (CWE-502)
• HMAC-SHA256 integrity signing — each encoding file has a .sig sidecar verified before loading; key stored at /etc/face-unlock/secret.key (chmod 600)
• Username validation — alphanumeric + ._-, max 32 chars, preventing path traversal
• Rate limiting — per-user file-based throttle with fcntl file locking to prevent race conditions; lockout directory and files created with restrictive permissions (0o700/0o600)
• Fail-closed errors — rate limit file corruption results in denial, not bypass
• No network — all processing is local; no data leaves your machine
• Minimal attack surface — no daemons, no DBus services, no network sockets

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Project Structure

face-unlock/
├── face_unlock/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── authenticate.py      # PAM auth module
│   ├── camera.py            # OpenCV camera capture
│   ├── cli.py               # Management CLI
│   ├── config.py            # Configuration reader
│   ├── dialog.py            # Notification + choice dialog
│   ├── enroll.py            # User enrollment
│   ├── face_engine.py       # Face detection & recognition
│   ├── pam.py               # PAM file manipulation
│   ├── session.py           # Display session detection
│   ├── storage.py           # Encoding storage with HMAC
│   └── test.py              # Diagnostics
├── tests/
│   ├── test_pam.py          # Unit tests for pam.py
│   └── integration_test.sh  # Integration test with real PAM files
├── install.sh               # System installer
├── uninstall.sh             # System uninstaller
├── requirements.txt          # Python dependencies
├── pyproject.toml            # Package metadata
├── LICENSE                   # Apache 2.0
├── CONTRIBUTING.md           # Contribution guidelines
└── .github/
    ├── workflows/
    │   └── ci.yml            # GitHub Actions CI
    └── ISSUE_TEMPLATE/
        ├── bug_report.md
        └── feature_request.md

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Uninstall

sudo ./uninstall.sh

The uninstaller will:

• Remove wrapper scripts and library files
• Optionally remove configuration and encodings
• Restore PAM files from backup (or remove face-unlock lines)

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

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License

Copyright 2026 mohit31kumar

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.