Users with limited use of their hands, such as people suffering from disabilities of the arm, shoulder, and hand (DASH), face challenges when authenticating with computer terminals, specially with publicly accessible terminals such as ATMs. A new glass wearable device was recently introduced by Google and it was immediately welcomed by groups of users, such as the ones described above, as Google Glass allows them to perform actions, like taking a photo, using only verbal commands. This paper investigates whether glass wearable devices can be used to authenticate users, both to grant access (one-time) and to maintain access (continuous), in similar hands-free fashion. We do so by designing and implementing Gauth, a system that enables users to authenticate with a service simply by issuing a voice command, while facing the computer terminal they are going to use to access the service. To achieve this goal, we create a physical communication channel from the terminal to the device using machine readable visual codes, like QR codes, and utilize the device's network adapter to communicate directly with a service. More importantly, we continuously authenticate the user accessing the terminal, exploiting the fact that a user operating a terminal is most likely facing it most of the time. We periodically issue authentication challenges, which are displayed as a QR code on the terminal, that cause the glass device to re-authenticate the user with an appropriate response. We evaluate our system to determine the technical limits of our approach.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly empowering people with an interconnected world of physical objects ranging from smart buildings to portable smart devices such as wearables. With recent advances in mobile sensing, wearables have become a rich collection of portable sensors and are able to provide various types of services including tracking of health and fitness, making financial transactions, and unlocking smart locks and vehicles. Most of these services are delivered based on users' confidential and personal data, which are stored on these wearables. Existing explicit authenticat…
We study the feasibility of touch gesture behavioural biometrics for implicit authentication of users on a smartglass (Google Glass) by proposing a continuous authentication system using two classifiers: SVM with RBF kernel, and a new classifier based on Chebyshev's concentration inequality. Based on data collected from 30 volunteers, we show that such authentication is feasible both in terms of classification accuracy and computational load on smartglasses. We achieve a classification accuracy of up to 99% with only 75 training samples using behavioural biometric data from four different type…
Biometric-based authentication is gaining increasing attention for wearables and mobile applications. Meanwhile, the growing adoption of sensors in wearables also provides opportunities to capture novel wearable biometrics. In this work, we propose EarDynamic, an ear canal deformation-based user authentication using in-ear wearables. EarDynamic provides continuous and passive user authentication and is transparent to users. It leverages ear canal deformation that combines the unique static geometry and dynamic motions of the ear canal when the user is speaking for authentication. It utilizes a…
The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly empowering people with an interconnected world of physical objects ranging from smart buildings to portable smart devices such as wearables. With the recent advances in mobile sensing, wearables have become a rich collection of portable sensors and are able to provide various types of services including health and fitness tracking, financial transactions, and unlocking smart locks and vehicles. Existing explicit authentication approaches (i.e., PINs or pattern locks) suffer from several limitations including limited display size, shoulder surfing, a…
One-time login process in conventional authentication systems does not guarantee that the identified user is the actual user throughout the session. However, it is necessary to re-verify the user identity periodically throughout a login session without reducing the user convenience. Continuous authentication can address this issue. However, existing methods are either not reliable or not usable. In this paper, we introduce a usable and reliable method called Wearable Assisted Continuous Authentication (WACA). WACA relies on the sensor based keystroke dynamics, where the authentication data is …
In this work, we examine the impact of Treadmill Assisted Gait Spoofing (TAGS) on Wearable Sensor-based Gait Authentication (WSGait). We consider more realistic implementation and deployment scenarios than the previous study, which focused only on the accelerometer sensor and a fixed set of features. Specifically, we consider the situations in which the implementation of WSGait could be using one or more sensors embedded into modern smartphones. Besides, it could be using different sets of features or different classification algorithms, or both. Despite the use of a variety of sensors, featur…
Personal devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, and mobile phones) are conventional in daily life and have the ability to store users' private data. The security problems related to these appliances have become a primary concern for both users and researchers. In this paper, we analyse first-person-view videos to develop a personalized user authentication mechanism. Our proposed algorithm generates provisional image-based passwords which benefit a variety of purposes such as unlocking a mobile device or fallback authentication. First, representative frames are extracted from the egocentric videos. Th…
Over the past several years, the electrocardiogram (ECG) has been investigated for its uniqueness and potential to discriminate between individuals. This paper discusses how this discriminatory information can help in continuous user authentication by a wearable chest strap which uses dry electrodes to obtain a single lead ECG signal. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first such work which deals with continuous authentication using a genuine wearable device as most prior works have either used medical equipment employing gel electrodes to obtain an ECG signal or have obtained …
Earables (ear wearables) is rapidly emerging as a new platform encompassing a diverse range of personal applications. The traditional authentication methods hence become less applicable and inconvenient for earables due to their limited input interface. Nevertheless, earables often feature rich around-the-head sensing capability that can be leveraged to capture new types of biometrics. In this work, we proposeToothSonic which leverages the toothprint-induced sonic effect produced by users performing teeth gestures for earable authentication. In particular, we design representative teeth gestur…
Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) is one of the greatest growing technology for sensing and performing various tasks. The information transmitted in the WBSNs is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, therefore security is very important. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are considered one of the major threats against WBSNs security. In DoS attacks, an adversary targets to degrade and shut down the efficient use of the network and disrupt the services in the network causing them inaccessible to its intended users. If sensitive information of patients in WBSNs, such as the medical history is accessed …
In this paper, we show that by using inertial sensor data generated by a smart ring, worn on the finger, the user can be authenticated when making mobile payments or when knocking on a door (for access control). The proposed system can be deployed purely in software and does not require updates to existing payment terminals or infrastructure. We also demonstrate that smart ring data can authenticate smartwatch gestures, and vice versa, allowing either device to act as an implicit second factor for the other. To validate the system, we conduct a user study (n=21) to collect inertial sensor data…
We introduce Pixie, a novel, camera based two factor authentication solution for mobile and wearable devices. A quick and familiar user action of snapping a photo is sufficient for Pixie to simultaneously perform a graphical password authentication and a physical token based authentication, yet it does not require any expensive, uncommon hardware. Pixie establishes trust based on both the knowledge and possession of an arbitrary physical object readily accessible to the user, called trinket. Users choose their trinkets similar to setting a password, and authenticate by presenting the same trin…
Authentication and authorization are critical security layers to protect a wide range of online systems, services and content. However, the increased prevalence of wearable and mobile devices, the expectations of a frictionless experience and the diverse user environments will challenge the way users are authenticated. Consumers demand secure and privacy-aware access from any device, whenever and wherever they are, without any obstacles. This paper reviews emerging trends and challenges with frictionless authentication systems and identifies opportunities for further research related to the en…
Lightweight MobileNetV1+GRU for ECG Biometric Authentication: Federated and Adversarial Evaluation
Department of Computer Science \& Information Technology IoST, Tribhuwan University, Nepal;Department of Electronics;Computer Engineering Institute of Engineering, Dharan, Nepal
Securely pairing wearables with another device is the key to many promising applications. This paper presents \textit{Touch-And-Guard (TAG)}, a system that uses hand touch as an intuitive manner to establish a secure connection between a wristband wearable and the touched device. It generates secret bits from hand resonant properties, which are obtained using accelerometers and vibration motors. The extracted secret bits are used by both sides to authenticate each other and then communicate confidentially. The ubiquity of accelerometers and motors presents an immediate market for our system. W…
Voice has become an increasingly popular User Interaction (UI) channel, mainly contributing to the ongoing trend of wearables, smart vehicles, and home automation systems. Voice assistants such as Siri, Google Now and Cortana, have become our everyday fixtures, especially in scenarios where touch interfaces are inconvenient or even dangerous to use, such as driving or exercising. Nevertheless, the open nature of the voice channel makes voice assistants difficult to secure and exposed to various attacks as demonstrated by security researchers. In this paper, we present VAuth, the first system t…
The growing trend of using wearable devices for context-aware computing and pervasive sensing systems has raised its potentials for quick and reliable authentication techniques. Since personal writing habitats differ from each other, it is possible to realize user authentication through writing. This is of great significance as sensible information is easily collected by these devices. This paper presents a novel user authentication system through wrist-worn devices by analyzing the interaction behavior with users, which is both accurate and efficient for future usage. The key feature of our a…
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices have become very popular because of their Low energy consumption and hence a prolonged battery life. They are being used in smart wearable devices, smart home automation system, beacons and many more areas. BLE uses pairing mechanisms to achieve a level of peer entity authentication as well as encryption. Although, there are a set of pairing mechanisms available but BLE devices having no keyboard or display mechanism (and hence using the Just Works pairing) are still vulnerable. In this paper, we propose and implement, a light-weight digital certificate based…
Amongst all medical biometric traits, Photoplethysmograph (PPG) is the easiest to acquire. PPG records the blood volume change with just combination of Light Emitting Diode and Photodiode from any part of the body. With IoT and smart homes' penetration, PPG recording can easily be integrated with other vital wearable devices. PPG represents peculiarity of hemodynamics and cardiovascular system for each individual. This paper presents non-fiducial method for PPG based biometric authentication. Being a physiological signal, PPG signal alters with physical/mental stress and time. For robustness, …
We consider a new concept of biometric-based cybersecurity systems for active authentication by continuous tracking, which utilizes biochemical processing of metabolites present in skin secretions. Skin secretions contain a large number of metabolites and small molecules that can be targeted for analysis. Here we argue that amino acids found in sweat can be exploited for the establishment of an amino acid profile capable of identifying an individual user of a mobile or wearable device. Individual and combinations of amino acids processed by biocatalytic cascades yield physical (optical or elec…
As the Covid-19 pandemic grips the world, healthcare systems are being reshaped, where the e-health concepts become more likely to be accepted. Wearable devices often carry sensitive information from users which are exposed to security and privacy risks. Moreover, users have always had the concern of being counterfeited between the fabrication process and vendors' storage. Hence, not only securing personal data is becoming a crucial obligation, but also device verification is another challenge. To address biometrics authentication and physically unclonable functions (PUFs) need to be put in pl…
Internet of Things (IoT) is considered as a key enabler of health informatics. IoT-enabled devices are used for in-hospital and in-home patient monitoring to collect and transfer biomedical data pertaining to blood pressure, electrocardiography (ECG), blood sugar levels, body temperature, etc. Among these devices, wearables have found their presence in a wide range of healthcare applications. These devices generate data in real-time and transmit them to nearby gateways and remote servers for processing and visualization. The data transmitted by these devices are vulnerable to a range of advers…
Behaviour biometrics are being explored as a viable alternative to overcome the limitations of traditional authentication methods such as passwords and static biometrics. Also, they are being considered as a viable authentication method for IoT devices such as smart headsets with AR/VR capabilities, wearables, and erables, that do not have a large form factor or the ability to seamlessly interact with the user. Recent behavioural biometric solutions use deep learning models that require large amounts of annotated training data. Collecting such volumes of behaviour biometrics data raises privac…
The popularity of wearable devices is growing exponentially, with consumers using these for a variety of services. Fitness devices are currently offering new services such as shopping or buying train tickets using contactless payment. In addition, fitness devices are collecting a number of personal information such as body temperature, pulse rate, food habits and body weight, steps-distance travelled, calories burned and sleep stage. Although these devices can offer convenience to consumers, more and more reports are warning of the cybersecurity risks of such devices, and the possibilities for…