User evaluation of lightweight user authentication with a single tri-axis accelerometer

ABSTRACT

We report a series of user studies that evaluate the feasibility and usability of light-weight user authentication with a single tri-axis accelerometer. We base our investigation on uWave, a state-of-the-art recognition system for user-created free-space manipulation, or gestures. Our user studies address two types of user authentication: non-critical authentication (or identification) for a user to retrieve privacy-insensitive data; and critical authentication for protecting privacy-sensitive data. For non-critical authentication, our evaluation shows that uWave achieves high recognition accuracy (98%) and its usability is comparable with text ID-based authentication. Our results also highlight the importance of constraints for users to select their gestures. For critical authentication, the evaluation shows uWave achieves state-of-the-art resilience to attacks with 3% false positives and 3% false negatives, or 3% equal error rate. We also show that the equal error rate increases to 10% if the attackers see the users performing their gestures. This shows the limitation of gesture-based authentication and highlights the need for visual concealment.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen); Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Performance, Security

Keywords:
accelerometer, authentication, gesture, user study