Robustness of Presentation Attack Detection in Remote Identity Validation Scenarios

Presentation attack detection (PAD) subsystems are an important part of effective and user-friendly remote identity validation (RIV) systems. However, ensuring robust performance across diverse environmental and procedural conditions remains a critical challenge. This paper investigates the impact of low-light conditions and automated image acquisition on the robustness of commercial PAD systems using a scenario test of RIV. Our results show that PAD systems experience a significant decline in performance when utilized in low-light or auto-capture scenarios, with a model-predicted increase in error rates by a factor of about four under low-light conditions and a doubling of those odds under auto-capture workflows. Specifically, only one of the tested systems was robust to these perturbations, maintaining a maximum bona fide presentation classification error rate below 3% across all scenarios. Our findings emphasize the importance of testing across diverse environments to ensure robust and reliable PAD performance in real-world applications.