Strengthening e-banking security using keystroke dynamics

This paper investigates keystroke dynamics and its possible use as a tool to prevent or detect fraud in the banking industry. Given that banks are constantly on the lookout for improved methods to address the menace of fraud, the paper sets out to review keystroke dynamics, its advantages, disadvantages and potential for improving the security of e-banking systems. This paper evaluates keystroke dynamics suitability of use for enhancing security in the banking sector. Results from the literature review found that keystroke dynamics can offer impressive accuracy rates for user identification. Low costs of deployment and minimal change to users modus operandi make this technology an attractive investment for banks. The paper goes on to argue that although this behavioural biometric may not be suitable as a primary method of authentication, it can be used as a secondary or tertiary method to complement existing authentication systems

Keystroke and Touch-dynamics Based Authentication for Desktop and Mobile Devices

The most commonly used system on desktop computers is a simple username and password approach which assumes that only genuine users know their own credentials. Once broken, the system will accept every authentication trial using compromised credentials until the breach is detected. Mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, have seen an explosive increase for personal computing and internet browsing. While the primary mode of interaction in such devices is through their touch screen via gestures, the authentication procedures have been inherited from keyboard-based computers, e.g. a Personal Identification Number, or a gesture based password, etc.;This work provides contributions to advance two types of behavioral biometrics applicable to desktop and mobile computers: keystroke dynamics and touch dynamics. Keystroke dynamics relies upon the manner of typing rather than what is typed to authenticate users. Similarly, a continual touch based authentication that actively authenticates the user is a more natural alternative for mobile devices.;Within the keystroke dynamics domain, habituation refers to the evolution of user typing pattern over time. This work details the significant impact of habituation on user behavior. It offers empirical evidence of the significant impact on authentication systems attempting to identify a genuine user affected by habituation, and the effect of habituation on similarities between users and impostors. It also proposes a novel effective feature for the keystroke dynamics domain called event sequences. We show empirically that unlike features from traditional keystroke dynamics literature, event sequences are independent of typing speed. This provides a unique advantage in distinguishing between users when typing complex text.;With respect to touch dynamics, an immense variety of mobile devices are available for consumers, differing in size, aspect ratio, operating systems, hardware and software specifications to name a few. An effective touch based authentication system must be able to work with one user model across a spectrum of devices and user postures. This work uses a locally collected dataset to provide empirical evidence of the significant effect of posture, device size and manufacturer on user authentication performance. Based on the results of this strand of research, we suggest strategies to improve the performance of continual touch based authentication systems

Keystroke dynamics based user authentication using deep multilayer perceptron

User authentication is an essential factor to protect digital service and prevent malicious users from gaining access to the system. As Single Factor Authentication (SFA) is less secure, organizations started to utilize Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to provide reliable protection by using two or more identification measures. Keystroke dynamics is a behavioral biometric, which analyses users typing rhythm to identify the legitimacy of the subject accessing the system. Keystroke dynamics that have a low implementation cost and does not require additional hardware in the authentication process since the collection of typing data is relatively simple as it does not require extra effort from the user. This study aims to propose deep learning model using Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) in keystroke dynamics for user authentication on CMU benchmark dataset. The user typing rhythm from 51 subjects collected based on the static password (.tie5Roanl) typed 400 times over 8 sessions and 50 repetitions per session. The MLP achieved optimum EER of 4.45% compared to original benchmark classifiers such as 9.6% (scaled Manhattan), 9.96% (Mahalanobis Nearest Neighbor), 10.22% (Outlier Count), 10.25% and 16.14% (Neural Network Auto-Assoc). © 2020 by the authors

User habitation in keystroke dynamics based authentication

Most computer systems use usernames and passwords for authentication and access control. For long, password security has been framed as a tradeoff between user experience and password security. Trading off one for the other appears to be an inevitable dilemma for single password based security applications. As a new biometric for authenticating access, keystroke dynamics offers great promises in hardening the password mechanism. Our research first investigate the keystroke dynamics based password security by conducting an incremental study on user\u27s habituation process for keystroke dynamics analysis using two distinct types of passwords. The study shows that (1) long and complex passwords are more efficient to be employed in keystroke dynamics systems; and (2) there is a habituation and acclimation process before the user obtains a stable keystroke pattern and the system collects enough training data. Then, based on our findings, we propose a two passwords mechanism that attempts to strike the right balance over user experience and password security by adopting a conventional easy-to-memorize password followed by a long-and-complex phrase for keystroke dynamics verification. Analysis and experimental studies successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach

Investigating keystroke dynamics as a two-factor biometric security

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Systems Security (MSc.ISS) at Strathmore UniversityKeystroke dynamics is the study of how people can be distinguished based on their typing rhythms. This proposal aims at investigating user authentication approaches and how keystroke dynamics can be used to enhance user authentication and access control. With more users embracing technologies and using applications without necessarily understanding the security repercussions, a further protection mechanism needs to be employed. It emphasizes on the need of an additional layer of security, through keystroke dynamics, on top of the traditional username-password combination to enhance security during authentication. It also proposes the use of a machine learning classifier for possible application in keystroke dynamics to verify and validate the legitimacy of a user during authentication

Non-conventional keystroke dynamics for user authentication

This paper introduces an approach for user authentication using free-text keystroke dynamics which incorporates the use of non-conventional keystroke features. Semi-timing features along with editing features are extracted from the user’s typing stream. Decision trees were exploited to classify each of the user’s data. In parallel for comparison, support vector machines (SVMs) were also used for classification in association with an ant colony optimization (ACO) feature selection technique. The results obtained from this study are encouraging as low false accept rates (FAR) and false reject rates (FRR) were achieved in the experimentation phase. This signifies that satisfactory overall system performance was achieved by using the typing attributes in the proposed approach. Thus, the use of non-conventional typing features improves the understanding of human typing behavior and therefore, provides significant contribution to the authentication system