Service Integration for Biometric Authentication

Unimodaalsete biomeetriliste süsteemide kasvav kasutuselevõtt era- ja riigiasutustes näitab biomeetriliste autentimissüsteemide edu. See aga ei tähenda, et biomeetrilised süsteemid pakuvad terviklikku autentimislahendust. Unimodaalsetes biomeetrilistes süsteemides ilmneb hulk piiranguid, mida on võimalik ületada kasutades multimodaalseid biomeetrilisi autentimissüsteeme. Multimodaalseid süsteeme peetakse töökindlamaks ja võimeliseks rahuldama rangeid jõudlusvajadusi. Lisaks võimaldavad multimodaalsed süsteemid arvestada mitteuniversaalsuse probleemiga ja tõhusalt tõrjuda võltsimisrünnakuid. Vaatamata suhtelistele eelistele on multimodaalsete biomeetriliste süsteemide realisatsioon ja kasutusmugavus jäänud fundamentaalseks väljakutseks tarkvaraarenduses. Multimodaalsed süsteemid on enamasti sulam unimodaalsetest süsteemidest, mis on valitud vastavalt äriprotsessi ja vaadeldava keskkonna nõuetele. Nende süsteemide mitmekesisus, lähtekoodi kättesaadavus ja juurutamisvajadused muudavad nende arenduse ja kasutuselevõtu oluliselt kulukamaks. Tarkvaraarendajatena üritame me lihtsustada arendusprotsessi ja minimeerides selleks vajamineva jõupingutuse suurust. Seetõttu keskendub see töö olemasolevate biomeetriliste süsteemide taaskasutatavaks muutmisele. Eesmärgiks on kirjeldada teenuste integratsiooni raamistik, mis automatiseerib heterogeensete biomeetriliste süsteemide sujuvat seadistamist ja paigaldust ning vähendab arenduse töömahtu ja sellega seotud kulutusi. Selle eesmärgi saavutamiseks kõrvaldame me vajaduse korduva stsenaariumipõhise ühilduvate süsteemide arenduse ja integratsiooni järgi. Biomeetriliste süsteemide arendus muudetakse ühekordseks tööks. Me esitleme ka vahendeid heterogeensetest avatud lähetekoodiga ja kommerts biomeetrilistest süsteemidest koosnevate multimodaalsete biomeetriliste süsteemide seadistamiseks ja paigaldamiseks lähtuvalt valdkonnaspetsiifilistest autentimisvajadustest. Võrreldes levinud praktikatega vähendab meie lähenemine stsenaariumi-spetsiifilise biomeetrilise autentimissüsteemi arendusele ja paigaldusele kuluvat töö hulka 46,42%.The success of biometric authentication systems is evident from the increasing rate of adoption of unimodal biometric systems in civil and governmental applications. However, this does not imply that biometric systems offer a complete authentication solution. Unimodal biometric systems exhibit a multitude of limitations which can be overcome by using multimodal biometric authentication systems. Multimodal systems are considered more reliable, and capable of meeting stringent performance needs and addressing the problem of non-universality and spoof attacks effectively. Despite the relative advantages, implementation and usability of multimodal biometric systems remain a fundamental software engineering challenge. Multimodal systems are usually an amalgamation of unimodal biometric systems chosen in accordance with the needs dictated by the business process(es) and the respective environment under consideration. The heterogeneity, availability of source code, and deployment needs for these systems incur significantly higher development and adaption costs. Being software engineers, we naturally strive to simplify the engineering process and minimize the required amount of effort. Therefore this work focuses on making the existing biometric systems reusable. The objective is to define a service integration framework which automates seamless configuration, and deployment of heterogeneous biometric systems, and minimizes the development effort and related costs. In this effort we replace the need for development and integration of scenario-specific compatible systems by repetitive scenario-specific configuration and deployment of multimodal biometric systems. The development of biometric systems is minimized to a one-time effort. We also present tools for configuration and deployment, which respectively configure and deploy multimodal biometric systems comprising of heterogeneous open source and/or commercial biometric systems required for fulfillment of domain specific authentication needs. In comparison to the prevalent practices, our approach reduces the effort required for developing and deploying reliable scenario-specific biometric authentication systems by 46.42%

Advances in Wearable Photoplethysmography Applications in Health Monitoring

In the last few years, interest in wearable technology for physiological signal monitoring is rapidly growing, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

An Evaluation of Mouse and Keyboard Interaction Indicators towards Non-intrusive and Low Cost Affective Modeling in an Educational Context

AbstractIn this paper we propose a series of indicators, which derive from user's interactions with mouse and keyboard. The goal is to evaluate their use in identifying affective states and behavior changes in an e-learning platform by means of non-intrusive and low cost methods. The approach we have followed study user's interactions regardless of the task being performed and its presentation, aiming at finding a solution applicable in any domain. In particular, mouse movements and clicks, as well as keystrokes were recorded during a math problem solving activity where users involved in the experiment had not only to score their degree of valence (i.e., pleasure versus displeasure) and arousal (i.e., high activation versus low activation) of their affective states after each problem by using the Self-Assessment-Manikin scale, but also type a description of their own feelings. By using that affective labeling, we evaluated the information provided by these different indicators processed from the original user's interactions logs. In total, we computed 42 keyboard indicators and 96 mouse indicators

Dialogue Management and Language Generation for a Robust Conversational Virtual Coach: Validation and User Study

Designing human–machine interactive systems requires cooperation between different disciplines is required. In this work, we present a Dialogue Manager and a Language Generator that are the core modules of a Voice-based Spoken Dialogue System (SDS) capable of carrying out challenging, long and complex coaching conversations. We also develop an efficient integration procedure of the whole system that will act as an intelligent and robust Virtual Coach. The coaching task significantly differs from the classical applications of SDSs, resulting in a much higher degree of complexity and difficulty. The Virtual Coach has been successfully tested and validated in a user study with independent elderly, in three different countries with three different languages and cultures: Spain, France and Norway.The research presented in this paper has been conducted as part of the project EMPATHIC that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant No. 769872. Additionally, this work has been partially funded by projects BEWORD and AMIC-PC of the Minister of Science of Technology, under Grant Nos. PID2021-126061OB-C42 and PDC2021-120846-C43, respectively. Vázquez and López Zorrilla received a PhD scholarship from the Basque Government, with Grant Nos. PRE 2020 1 0274 and PRE 2017 1 0357, respectively

A Survey on Ear Biometrics

Recognizing people by their ear has recently received significant attention in the literature. Several reasons account for this trend: first, ear recognition does not suffer from some problems associated with other non contact biometrics, such as face recognition; second, it is the most promising candidate for combination with the face in the context of multi-pose face recognition; and third, the ear can be used for human recognition in surveillance videos where the face may be occluded completely or in part. Further, the ear appears to degrade little with age. Even though, current ear detection and recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited to controlled indoor conditions. In addition to variation in illumination, other open research problems include hair occlusion; earprint forensics; ear symmetry; ear classification; and ear individuality. This paper provides a detailed survey of research conducted in ear detection and recognition. It provides an up-to-date review of the existing literature revealing the current state-of-art for not only those who are working in this area but also for those who might exploit this new approach. Furthermore, it offers insights into some unsolved ear recognition problems as well as ear databases available for researchers

Biometric encryption system for increased security

Security is very important in present day life. In this highly-interconnected world, most of our daily activities are computer based, and the data transactions are protected by passwords. These passwords identify various entities such as bank accounts, mobile phones, etc. People might reuse the same password, or passwords related to an individual that can lead to attacks. Indeed, remembering several passwords can become a tedious task. Biometrics is a science that measures an individual’s physical characteristics in a unique way. Thus, biometrics serves as a method to replace the cumbersome use of complex passwords. Our research uses the features of biometrics to efficiently implement a biometric encryption system with a high level of security

Reproductive isolation between two sympatric simultaneous hermaphroditic shrimp, Lysmata wurdemanni and L. boggessi

To investigate pre- and post-zygotic isolation between two sympatric and phylogenetically related species of Lysmata shrimp, two assays were conducted in the laboratory: (1) no specific mate choice where mating between the two species was ‘forced’; (2) specific mate choice or preference where a female had a choice between conspecific and heterospecifc males. Behavioural studies reveal that female L. wurdemanni accepted only conspecific male shrimp, whereas L. boggessi females would mate with an interspecific male if there was no conspecific male present. When males of both species were present, L. boggessi females always mated with the conspecific male. Male L. boggessi in general did not respond to the sex pheromones secreted by female L. wurdemanni and did not display any pre-copulatory behaviour to newly moulted female L. wurdemanni. On the other hand, some male L. wurdemanni responded to female L. boggessi. Although mating was successful between male L. wurdemanni and female L. boggessi, the resulting embryos lived at most for 10 days and failed to hatch. The results indicate that the two species are both pre-zygotically and post-zygotically isolated. Behavioural observation suggests that chemical cues are most likely responsible for pre-zygotic isolation

Perceiving is Believing. Authentication with Behavioural and Cognitive Factors

Most computer users have experienced login problems such as, forgetting passwords, loosing token cards and authentication dongles, failing that complicated screen pattern once again, as well as, interaction difficulties in usability. Facing the difficulties of non-flexible strong authentication solutions, users tend to react with poor acceptance or to relax the assumed correct use of authentication procedures and devices, rendering the intended security useless. Biometrics can, sort of, solve some of those problems. However, despite the vast research, there is no perfect solution into designing a secure strong authentication procedure, falling into a trade off between intrusiveness, effectiveness, contextual adequacy and security guarantees. Taking advantage of new technology, recent research onmulti-modal, behavioural and cognitive oriented authentication proposals have sought to optimize trade off towards precision and convenience, reducing intrusiveness for the same amount of security. But these solutions also fall short with respect to different scenarios. Users perform currently multiple authentications everyday, through multiple devices, in panoply of different situations, involving different resources and diverse usage contexts, with no "better authentication solution" for all possible purposes. The proposed framework enhances the recent research in user authentication services with a broader view on the problems involving each solution, towards an usable secure authentication methodology combining and exploring the strengths of each method. It will than be used to prototype instances of new dynamic multifactor models (including novel models of behavioural and cognitive biometrics), materializing the PiB (perceiving is believing) authentication. Ultimately we show how the proposed framework can be smoothly integrated in applications and other authentication services and protocols, namely in the context of SSO Authentication Services and OAuth