Biblio

With the help of technological advancements in the last decade, it has become much easier to extensively and remotely observe medical conditions of the patients through wearable biosensors that act as connected nodes on Body Area Networks (BANs). Sensitive nature of the critical data captured and communicated via wireless medium makes it extremely important to process it as securely as possible. In this regard, lightweight security mechanisms are needed to overcome the hardware resource restrictions of biosensors. Random and secure cryptographic key generation and agreement among the biosensors take place at the core of these security mechanisms. In this paper, we propose the SKA-PSAR (Augmented Randomness for Secure Key Agreement using Physiological Signals) system to produce highly random cryptographic keys for the biosensors to secure communication in BANs. Similar to its predecessor SKA-PS protocol by Karaoglan Altop et al., SKA-PSAR also employs physiological signals, such as heart rate and blood pressure, as inputs for the keys and utilizes the set reconciliation mechanism as basic building block. Novel quantization and binarization methods of the proposed SKA-PSAR system distinguish it from SKA-PS by increasing the randomness of the generated keys. Additionally, SKA-PSAR generated cryptographic keys have distinctive and time variant characteristics as well as long enough bit sizes that provides resistance against cryptographic attacks. Moreover, correct key generation rate is above 98% with respect to most of the system parameters, and false key generation rate of 0% have been obtained for all system parameters.

With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence technology to make smart devices, understanding how humans develop trust in virtual agents is emerging as a critical research field. Through our research, we report on a novel methodology to investigate user's trust in auditory assistance in a Virtual Reality (VR) based search task, under both high and low cognitive load and under varying levels of agent accuracy. We collected physiological sensor data such as electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart-rate variability (HRV), subjective data through questionnaire such as System Trust Scale (STS), Subjective Mental Effort Questionnaire (SMEQ) and NASA-TLX. We also collected a behavioral measure of trust (congruency of users' head motion in response to valid/ invalid verbal advice from the agent). Our results indicate that our custom VR environment enables researchers to measure and understand human trust in virtual agents using the matrices, and both cognitive load and agent accuracy play an important role in trust formation. We discuss the implications of the research and directions for future work.

Wearable devices, such as implantable medical devices and smart wearables, are becoming increasingly popular with applications that vary from casual activity monitoring to critical medical uses. Unsurprisingly, numerous security vulnerabilities have been found in this class of devices. Yet, research on physical measurement-based authentication and key distribution assumes that body-worn devices are benign and uncompromised. Tiek is a novel authentication and key distribution protocol which addresses this issue. We utilize two sources of randomness to perform device authentication and key distribution simultaneously but through separate means. This creates a two-tier authorization scheme that enables devices to join the network while protecting them from each other. We describe Tiek and analyze its security.

Existing access control mechanisms are based on the concept of identity enrolment and recognition and assume that recognized identity is a synonym to ethical actions, yet statistics over the years show that the most severe security breaches are the results of trusted, identified, and legitimate users who turned into malicious insiders. Insider threat damages vary from intellectual property loss and fraud to information technology sabotage. As insider threat incidents evolve, there exist demands for a nonidentity-based authentication measure that rejects access to authorized individuals who have mal-intents of access. In this paper, we study the possibility of using the user's intention as an access control measure using the involuntary electroencephalogram reactions toward visual stimuli. We propose intent-based access control (IBAC) that detects the intentions of access based on the existence of knowledge about an intention. IBAC takes advantage of the robustness of the concealed information test to assess access risk. We use the intent and intent motivation level to compute the access risk. Based on the calculated risk and risk accepted threshold, the system makes the decision whether to grant or deny access requests. We assessed the model using experiments on 30 participants that proved the robustness of the proposed solution.

Techno-stress has been a problem in recent years with a development of information technology. Various studies have been reported about a relationship between key typing and psychosomatic state. Keystroke dynamics are known as dynamics of a key typing motion. The objective of this paper is to clarify the mechanism between keystroke dynamics and physiological responses. Inter-stroke time (IST) that was the interval between each keystroke was measured as keystroke dynamics. The physiological responses were heart rate variability (HRV) and respiration (Resp). The system consisted of IST, HRV, and Resp was applied multidimensional directed coherence in order to reveal a causal correlation. As a result, it was observed that strength of entrainment of physiological responses having fluctuation to IST differed in surround by the noise and a cognitive load. Specifically, the entrainment became weak as a cognitive resource devoted to IST was relatively increased with the keystroke motion had a robust rhythm. On the other hand, the entrainment became stronger as a cognitive resource devoted to IST was relatively decreased since the resource also devoted to the noise or the cognitive load.

The aim of this study is to examine the utility of physiological compliance (PC) to understand shared experience in a multiuser technological environment involving active and passive users. Common ground is critical for effective collaboration and important for multiuser technological systems that include passive users since this kind of user typically does not have control over the technology being used. An experiment was conducted with 48 participants who worked in two-person groups in a multitask environment under varied task and technology conditions. Indicators of PC were measured from participants' cardiovascular and electrodermal activities. The relationship between these PC indicators and collaboration outcomes, such as performance and subjective perception of the system, was explored. Results indicate that PC is related to group performance after controlling for task/technology conditions. PC is also correlated with shared perceptions of trust in technology among group members. PC is a useful tool for monitoring group processes and, thus, can be valuable for the design of collaborative systems. This study has implications for understanding effective collaboration.