Context-Aware Authentication Using Co-Located Devices

This paper proposes a context-aware authentication mechanism that verifies the identity of a user via the data generated by detecting short-range radio signals from nearby devices. Many projects on user authentication have aimed to improve security and usability. Although these projects have been successful in solving individual problems, authentication using passwords remains the most dominant authentication mechanism. So far, however, only a few attempts have been made at pursuing authentication using information about co-located devices, even though an increasingly large number of wearable and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is appearing in our computing environments. We explore the feasibility of the proposed mechanism by conducting in-house experiments. Our experimental results suggest that the information on co-location with nearby devices has good potential for implicitly and continuously authenticating a user while modulating the authentication accuracy.