TouchEnc: a Novel Behavioural Encoding Technique to Enable Computer Vision for Continuous Smartphone User Authentication

Aaby, Peter; Giuffrida, Mario Valerio; Buchanan, William J.; Tan, Zhiyuan

Abstract

We are increasingly required to prove our identity when using smartphones through explicit authentication processes such as passwords or physiological biometrics, e.g., authorising online banking transactions or unlocking smartphones. However, these methods are often annoying to input and do not guarantee that the genuine user remains the same. Thus, a modern verification process should differ from traditional authentication. In touch-based biometrics, a new approach must not verify what we draw but how we draw it. Our research proposes TouchEnc, a Deep Learning approach that outperforms conventional methods. Unlike Machine Learning methods, TouchEnc automates the feature extraction from touch gestures. TouchEnc achieves this by transforming and encoding touch behaviour into images, enabling continuous authentication through modern computer vision. Our approach has been tested on a popular and publicly available dataset to demonstrate its effectiveness. Results show that users can authenticate using TouchEnc with a single gesture containing users' on-screen navigational behaviour, independent of drawing up, down, left, or right. TouchEnc achieves an 8.4% Equal Error Rate and a 96.7% Area Under the Curve using a single gesture. Furthermore, TouchEnc achieves up to 65% better Equal Error Rates when combining gestures compared to the related work.

Citation

Aaby, P., Giuffrida, M. V., Buchanan, W. J., & Tan, Z. (2023, November). TouchEnc: a Novel Behavioural Encoding Technique to Enable Computer Vision for Continuous Smartphone User Authentication. Presented at The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom-2023), Exeter, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom-2023)
• Start Date: Nov 1, 2023
• End Date: Nov 3, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Sep 8, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2024
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 14, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 31, 2023
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 788-795
• Book Title: 2023 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom)
• ISBN: 9798350382006
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TrustCom60117.2023.00115
• Keywords: Behavioural Biometrics, Continuous Authentication, Computer Vision, Deep Learning
• Related Public URLs: https://hpcn.exeter.ac.uk/trustcom2023/