TWC: Medium: Collaborative: Towards Secure, Robust, and Usable Gesture-Based Authentication

该项目研究了安全、稳健和可用的基于手势的身份验证作为传统字母数字密码和生物识别技术的替代方案的可行性。它的动机是与身份验证相关的安全漏洞的迅速增加，以及新的人机界面的出现。虽然这些漏洞已经证明了问题的严重性，但两种新兴的基于手势的界面，多点触控（智能手机、平板电脑）和基于摄像头的（Kinect），为强大的解决方案提供了独特的机会。基于手势的身份验证相对于纯生物识别的好处在于，它结合了不可撤销的非自愿生物识别特征（例如，手的形状）和用户控制的可轻易改变的自愿特征。目前有三个研究重点：1)手势识别算法（寻找稳健的手势特征、紧凑的表示和可靠的分类算法），2)人为因素（研究手势的唯一性、可重复性、人体工程学、设备依赖性和手势复杂性），3)安全考虑（在一系列性能度量和不同威胁模型下评估身份验证性能）。这项研究的成功完成将促进个人、机构和政府层面急需的下一代身份验证方法的开发和采用。由于修复安全漏洞所付出的代价（时间、金钱和资源）可能是惊人的，因此该项目将通过增加安全感和减少与漏洞相关的成本来产生重大的社会影响。在教育层面，该项目涉及波士顿大学的初中和高中外展以及纽约大学-保利大学的年度网络安全竞赛CSAW。

This project investigates the feasibility of secure, robust, and usable gesture-based authentication as an alternative to traditional alphanumeric passwords and biometrics. It is motivated by the rapid increase in authentication-related security breaches and by the emergence of new human-computer interfaces. While the breaches have demonstrated the seriousness of the issue, two emerging types of gesture-based interfaces, multi-touch (smartphones, tablets) and camera-based (Kinect), offer a unique opportunity for robust solution.The benefit of gesture-based authentication over a purely-biometric one lies in the fact that it combines involuntary biometric features (e.g., hand shape), that are irrevocable, with user-controlled voluntary characteristics that can be easily changed. Three research thrusts are being pursued: 1) gesture recognition algorithms (search for robust gesture features, their compact representation, and reliable classification algorithms), 2) human factors (study of uniqueness, repeatability, ergonomics, device dependence of gestures, and gesture complexity) and 3) security considerations (evaluation of authentication performance under a range of performance measures and different threat models). A successful completion of this research will catalyze the development and adoption of next-generation authentication methods that are critically needed at the personal, institutional, and governmental levels. As the price paid (time, money, and resources) to repair a security breach can be astounding, this project will have substantial societal impact by increasing the sense of security and reducing breach-related costs. At educational level, this project is involved in middle and high school outreach at Boston University as well as the annual cybsersecurity competition CSAW at NYU-Poly.