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Keystroke analysis as an authentication method for thumb-based keyboards on mobile handsets
Karatzouni S, Clarke NL
Advances in Network & Communication Engineering 4, ISBN: 978-1-84102-180-5, pp213-221, 2007
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The evolution of mobile networking has opened the door to a range of possibilities for mobile devices, increasing at the same time the sensitivity of the information stored and access through them. Current PIN-based authentication has proved to be an insufficient and an inconvenient approach. Biometrics that have proved to be a reliable approach to identity verification can provide a more robust mean of security as they rely on personal identifiers. Amongst various biometric techniques keystroke analysis combines features that can offer a cost effective, non-intrusive and continuous authentication solution for mobile devices. This research is being undertaken in order to investigate the performance of keystroke analysis on thumb-based keyboards that are being widely used in PDA’s and Smartphone devices. The investigation was based on the scenario of authenticating users while typing text messages, using two keystroke characteristics, inter-key latency and hold-time. The results showed to be promising achieving an EER=12.2% with the inter-key latency, whereas unusually hold-time did not prove to be a feasible feature to utilise in such tactile environment.

Karatzouni S, Clarke NL