I-Corps: Securing Mobile Devices with Memorable, Usable, and Secure Authentication

这个i-Corps项目的广泛影响/商业潜力是通过令人难忘的、可用的和安全的身份验证方案来保护移动设备用户的安全和隐私。据统计，到2019年，全球智能手机用户将超过50亿。这些移动设备的流行归功于一系列独特的功能，包括通过Wifi和4G/LTE等通信技术无处不在的互联网接入、易于使用的触摸式输入以及大量的应用程序和游戏。与此同时，移动设备的安全正成为一个主要问题，因为设备用户正在存储个人联系人等敏感数据，并使用银行和股票交易等敏感应用程序。作为前沿防御机制的强身份验证可以防止对移动设备进行未经授权的访问，这可能会导致缺乏问责、数据丢失或被盗以及身份被盗。由于移动设备的普及及其在政府、商业甚至军事应用中的应用，使用安全、可记忆和可用的身份验证来保护移动设备的安全具有重要的社会意义。这种新的多维认证方案可以同时达到更好的可记忆性、安全性和易用性。新方案融合了来自多个维度的信息，形成了一个密码，允许方案扩大密码空间，并通过减少记忆干扰来提高记忆性。信息融合可以提高可用性，因为相同安全强度的密码需要更少的输入手势。这些计划还可以防止肩部冲浪。成功的身份验证需要用户响应随机质询，以便在用户进行调整后满足一组预定义规则。该方案还可以用于持续监测设备用户行为，以确保当前设备用户是授权使用该设备的用户。通过这个项目，我们将能够调查不同客户群的需求，并改进我们的技术和原型以满足需求。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broad impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to protect security and privacy of mobile device users with memorable, usable, and secure authentication schemes. According to statista.com, the number of smartphone users in the world will be more than five billion by 2019. The popularity of these mobile devices is due to a unique set of features including ubiquitous Internet access through communication technologies such as Wifi and 4G/LTE, easy to use touch-based inputs, and numerous applications and games. In the meantime, the security of mobile devices is becoming a major concern as device users are storing sensitive data such as personal contacts and utilizing sensitive applications like banking and stock trading. Strong authentication as the forefront defense mechanism can prevent unauthorized access to a mobile device that may lead to lack of accountability, data loss or stealing, and identity theft. Due to the popularity of mobile devices and their uses in government, business, and even military applications, securing mobile devices with secure, memorable, and usable authentication is of great societal importance.This I-Corps project focuses on exploring the market potential for multi-dimensional authentication schemes. The new paradigm of multi-dimensional authentication schemes can achieve better memorability, security, and usability at the same time. The new schemes fuse information from multiple dimensions to form a password, allowing the schemes to enlarge the password space and improve memorability by reducing memory interference. The information fusion can increase usability as fewer input gestures are required for passwords of the same security strength. The schemes can also be shoulder-surfing resistant. A successful authentication requires a user to respond to a random challenge so that a set of predefined rules are satisfied after adjustments made by the user. The schemes can also be used for continuously monitoring device user behavior to ensure the current device users is a user authorized to use the device. Through this project, we will be able to investigate the needs from various customer segments and polish our technologies and prototypes to meet the needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.