Strong authentication based on mobile application

The user authentication in online services has evolved over time from the old username and password-based approaches to current strong authentication methodologies. Especially, the smartphone app has become one of the most important forms to perform the authentication. This thesis describes various authentication methods used previously and discusses about possible factors that generated the demand for the current strong authentication approach. We present the concepts and architectures of mobile application based authentication systems. Furthermore, we take closer look into the security of the mobile application based authentication approach. Mobile apps have various attack vectors that need to be taken under consideration when designing an authentication system. Fortunately, various generic software protection mechanisms have been developed during the last decades. We discuss how these mechanisms can be utilized in mobile app environment and in the authentication context. The main idea of this thesis is to gather relevant information about the authentication history and to be able to build a view of strong authentication evolution. This history and the aspects of the evolution are used to state hypothesis about the future research and development. We predict that the authentication systems in the future may be based on a holistic view of the behavioral patterns and physical properties of the user. Machine learning may be used in the future to implement an autonomous authentication concept that enables users to be authenticated with minimal physical or cognitive effort

Deviations from Triangular Arbitrage Parity in Foreign Exchange and Bitcoin Markets

This paper applies recently developed procedures to monitor and date so-called “financial market dislocations”, defined as periods in which substantial deviations from arbitrage parities take place. In particular, we focus on deviations from the triangular arbitrage parity for exchange rate triplets from a cointegration perspective. Due to increasing attention on and importance of mispricing in the market for cryptocurrencies, we include the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in addition to fiat currencies. We do not find evidence for substantial deviations from the triangular arbitrage parity when only traditional fiat currencies are concerned, but document significant deviations from triangular arbitrage parities in the newer markets for Bitcoin. We confirm the importance of our results for portfolio strategies by showing that a currency portfolio that trades based on our detected break-points outperforms a simple buy-and-hold strategy