Resonance-based Secure Pairing for Wearables
This addresses the security challenge for wearable device users by providing an intuitive and faster pairing method, though it is an incremental improvement over existing authentication techniques.
The paper tackles the problem of securely pairing wearables with other devices by introducing Touch-And-Guard (TAG), a system that uses hand resonant properties from accelerometers and vibration motors to generate secret bits for authentication and confidential communication. Experimental results with 12 participants and 1440 trials show that TAG achieves a secret bit generation rate of 7.15 bit/s, which is 44% faster than conventional PIN authentication.
Securely pairing wearables with another device is the key to many promising applications. This paper presents \textit{Touch-And-Guard (TAG)}, a system that uses hand touch as an intuitive manner to establish a secure connection between a wristband wearable and the touched device. It generates secret bits from hand resonant properties, which are obtained using accelerometers and vibration motors. The extracted secret bits are used by both sides to authenticate each other and then communicate confidentially. The ubiquity of accelerometers and motors presents an immediate market for our system. We demonstrate the feasibility of our system using an experimental prototype and conduct experiments involving 12 participants with 1440 trials. The results indicate that we can generate secret bits at a rate of 7.15 bit/s, which is 44% faster than conventional text input PIN authentication.