What is irlume?

Irlume brings Windows Hello style face unlocking to Linux. It lets you log in, unlock your screen, and optionally use sudo just by looking at your camera, instead of typing a password every time. The password always still works as a fallback, so you can never be locked out even if the camera fails to recognize you. It works with different kinds of cameras: an infrared camera, the same type used by Windows Hello laptops, unlocks a full secure mode that even works in the dark, a regular webcam gives a more convenient screen unlock, and a fingerprint reader can be added as an extra factor. The camera only turns on when you ask it to, by leaving the password field empty and pressing enter, so it is never silently watching. Rather than storing a picture of your face, it stores a mathematical representation of it, and on computers with a TPM security chip, that data is encrypted using a key sealed inside the chip itself, so it cannot simply be read off a stolen hard drive. It also includes checks meant to stop someone from tricking it with a photo or a video of your face displayed on a screen, and the README is upfront that a particularly good glossy printed photo can still fool the default settings, with an optional blink detection feature available to close that gap at the cost of a slightly slower login. The project compares itself directly against Windows Hello and two existing open-source Linux face-unlock projects, arguing it is more secure than both on template protection and camera-injection defenses. It installs with a single command that detects your Linux distribution, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, and their common variants are all supported, and a guided setup tool walks you through enrolling your face and wiring it into your login screen. A TPM security chip is strongly recommended but not required to use the tool. It is released under the GPL version 3 license.