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Typing Patterns for Authentication
Kelson writes "NPR's Marketplace is reporting on a new authentication scheme. BioPassword tracks the way you type your password: how long each key is depressed, the time between keystrokes, and overall speed. When someone tries to log into your account, it compares the pattern to what it has on file. It only allows you in if both the password and patterns match. The technique has been around a while. World War II Morse code operators used it to determine whether a message was sent by an ally or an impostor."
A Morse-operator's style was referred to as his "fist". This is referenced in Cryptonomicon.
I think this is a pretty nifty idea, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done before.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This will make it possible for a change of mood to deny your access to your own accounts. ..which will probably not help with the mood thing.
Great, now every time I fall off my bike or some other stupid accident that involves my hands, I won't be able to log in at all due to not matching the timing/pressure/etc. I can definitely see this ending in smashed keyboards. "It's me!!! Let me in you b@st@rd machine!"
No, I'm no going to say you invoked Godwin's Law right at the top of the article...
I immediately thought of WW2 when I read the title. A Morse Code operator's style was called their "fist". German operators became quite adept at mimicing the fist of other operators, and using the fist to identify captured operators didn't work well. This is why they had other signals for identifying that an operator was not captured. Things that would look like a typographical or crypto error to a third party, but which was known to both the sender and receiver, and the absence of them would indicate capture. Of course, under stress, sometimes these were forgotten.
The book Silk and Cyanide has a great discussion of the fist and other identification techniques and how they failed and succeeded (mostly the former). Highly recommended.
Sean
Short arms?
Long penis.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm beginning to think we're going to have to work up a check-off-the-problems sheet for these new authentication schemes like we pass around for anti-spam "solutions".
Here, I see two problems off the cuff:
Color me unimpressed. Is it an incremental improvement over plain passwords? Yes, but not enough to go with a $34,000 plus $1.15/user fee structure, as cited in the article.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
When I first create a new password I typically stumble just a bit when typing it. After a few days/weeks I start building up motion memory for my password. How would the system handle when people impove typing their password?
Yeah, not only that, but imagine when you've forgotten something important and you call home to talk to your spouse to get it.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
From the article:
"You're sleepy, right. They have a few little measures to catch that. If after a couple of goes it seems you're not typing the way it expects you to type, it will ask some additional security questions."
Ahh, so really all they've really done is increased the number of passwords an attacker has to try by a factor of 3 or so. Then you hit the question and you know you have the right password. At that point you can either solve the security questions (probably not as nearly as tough as the password, especially since no one expects it to be used) or they keep making occational tries at logging in with the correct password until you find their cadence (probably not that hard).
Note that I doubt that an attacker getting the password then bailing when they hit the question will raise any red flags, chances are there will be so many false positives that no one will bother to follow up.
I stole this Sig
while you were drunk, I intercepted the email you wrote to
- the girl from the office
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