Indian American Engineers Devise Way to Send Secure Passwords Via Human Touch
NEW
YORK — A team of Indian American engineers has devised a way to send secure
passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and
laptop touchpads — rather than over the air where they're vulnerable to
hacking.
Sending
a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers
who can attempt to break the encrypted code.
Now,
computer scientists and electrical engineers from the Seattle-based University
of Washington have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human
body — using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint
sensors and touchpads on consumer devices.
"Fingerprint
sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we've
shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send
out information that is confined to the body," said senior author Shyam
Gollakota, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
These
"on-body" transmissions offer a more secure way to transmit
authenticating information between devices that touch parts of your body — such
as a smart door lock or wearable medical device — and a phone or device that
confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.
"Let's
say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock," said co-lead
author Merhdad Hessar, an electrical engineering doctoral student. "I can
touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my
secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that
personal information over the air."
The
research team tested the technique on the iPhone and other fingerprint sensors,
as well as Lenovo laptop trackpads and the Adafruit capacitive touchpad.
In
tests with 10 different subjects, they were able to generate usable on-body
transmissions on people of different heights, weights and body types.
The
system also worked when subjects were in motion — including while they walked
and moved their arms.
"We
showed that it works in different postures like standing, sitting and
sleeping," said co-lead author Vikram Iyer, an electrical engineering
doctoral student. "We can also get a strong signal throughout your body.
The receivers can be anywhere — on your leg, chest, hands — and still
work."
The
technology could also be useful for secure key transmissions to medical devices
such as glucose monitors or insulin pumps, which seek to confirm someone's
identity before sending or sharing data.
The
new technique was described in a paper presented at the 2016 Association for
Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and
Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany this month.
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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