Visible to the public SaTC: CORE: Medium: Implicit One-handed Mobile User Authentication by Induced Thumb Biometrics on Touch-screen Handheld DevicesConflict Detection Enabled

Project Details

Lead PI

Performance Period

Aug 15, 2018 - Jul 31, 2020

Institution(s)

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Sponsor(s)

National Science Foundation

Award Number


People often store private and sensitive data on their mobile devices, and the security of these devices is essential. This project advances and develops a new process for verifying a user's legitimate right to access a mobile device. Existing research has not made this process very usable for many people who lack dexterity or the use of both hands. This research aims to design and develop a method for one-handed authentication on a touch-screen mobile handheld device. The objective is to improve both security and usability of authentication. The proposed methods also will detect unauthorized access to a mobile device in a continuous manner, even if the password is stolen. The interdisciplinary nature of this work will promote teaching, training, and education in mobile security and privacy, human-computer interaction, mobile accessibility, machine learning, and behavioral science. The researchers will actively engage students at both graduate and undergraduate levels in their research activities, and make a strong effort to engage women and underrepresented minorities.

The project will support one-handed mobile authentication on a touch-screen mobile handheld device by inducing thumb biometrics and by enabling one-handed text entry based on thumb strokes. This project will advance authentication research and practice by: (1) laying the groundwork for one-handed authentication in support of both point-of-entry and implicit continuous authentication; (2) introducing a new venue for improving the security of one-handed authentication by inducing and fusing thumb biometrics from user interactions with a touch-screen mobile device; (3) creating new design principles for improving the usability of mobile authentication; and (4) addressing accessibility challenges for users with situational or visual impairments via the support of keypress-less text entry on a mobile touch screen. This project will lend itself to a new solution that can address the common security-usability tradeoff of mobile authentication methods.

Continuation of Award #: 1704800