TWC: Small: Collaborative: Wearable Authentication Solutions for Ubiquitous and Personal Touch-enabled Devices

该项目旨在为泛在和支持个人触摸的设备提供可穿戴身份验证解决方案(WASUP)，研究和设计使用小型可穿戴令牌来识别、验证和审计触摸传感设备上的触摸的模型和技术。手镯或戒指等令牌在用户的电容式触摸签名中嵌入安全代码，许多触摸屏中使用的现有电容式传感器可以检测到这一点。这提供了许多独特且令人满意的特性。首先，代码显然与触摸有关，即使附近有多个潜在用户。其次，由于几乎不涉及空中信号传播，因此可以预期对通信通道的攻击将更难执行。由于这些独特的安全特性，该项目支持具有重大社会影响的广泛应用。例如，基于此建议技术的安全令牌可以产生逐步或持续授权用户的身份验证解决方案，并且比当前技术(如PIN码、蓝牙和近场通信(NFC))更健壮。WASUP的底层原语还可以允许不可观察的直接接触通信，例如在战术场景中，当检测到通信可能危及任务安全时。鉴于电容-触摸交互的使用显著增加，这些技术具有广泛应用的巨大潜力。WASUP项目还将包括各种令人兴奋和吸引人的教育活动，涉及K-12和本科生，例如通过研究实习计划开发利用WASUP的应用程序。该团队将首先对电容式触摸通信信号的产生、传播和检测进行建模，并探索相关的设计权衡。预期结果包括环境模型、透体信号传播模型和触摸传播时间模型，将为理解电容式触摸通信通道的能力和局限性提供基础性的理解。受这些模型的启发，该团队将研究硬件发射器和相应接收器软件的设计替代方案，以实现许多现实世界身份验证和识别场景所需的数据速率。在第三个推力中，研究人员建议设计、分析、实现和评估基于WASUP的安全设备和协议，以备受关注和实际使用。该团队计划通过在当前现成的设备上展示实用的可穿戴硬件令牌和示例应用程序来引导WASUP生态系统。

This project for Wearable Authentication Solutions for Ubiquitous and Personal Touch-Enabled Devices (WASUP) studies and designs models and techniques to identify, authenticate, and audit touches on touch-sensing devices using a small wearable token. The token, such as a bracelet or ring, embeds a security code in the capacitive touch signature of a user, which is detected with the existing capacitive sensors used in many touch screens. This offers a number of distinct and desirable properties. First, the code is clearly associated with a touch, even if multiple potential users are nearby. Second, one can expect attacks on the communication channel to be more difficult to execute, since virtually no over-the-air signal propagation is involved. Owing to these unique security properties, this project supports a broad range of applications with significant societal impact. For example, a security token based on this proposed technology could lead to authentication solutions that progressively or continuously authorize users and are more robust than current techniques such as PIN codes, Bluetooth, and Near Field Communications (NFC). The underlying primitives of WASUP could also allow unobservable and direct contact communication, for example in tactical scenarios, when the detection of communication can compromise mission security. Given the significantly growing use of capacitive-touch interaction, there exists great potential for widespread applications of these techniques. The WASUP project will also include a variety of exciting and appealing educational activities involving K-12 and undergraduate students, such as developing applications that make use of WASUP through research internship programs. The team will first model the generation, propagation, and detection of capacitive touch communication signals and explore relevant design trade-offs. The expected outcomes include the environment model, through-body signal propagation model, and touch propagation time model, which will provide the foundational understandings of the capabilities and limitations of capacitive touch communication channel. Informed by these models, the team will investigate design alternatives of the hardware transmitter and the corresponding receiver software in order to achieve the data rates necessary for many real-world authentication and identification scenarios. In the third thrust, the researchers propose to design, analyze, implement, and evaluate WASUP-based security devices and protocols for compelling and practical use cases. The team plans to bootstrap the WASUP ecosystem by demonstrating practical wearable hardware tokens with sample applications on current off-the-shelf devices.