A True Random Number Generator Based on Gait Data for the Internet of You

The Internet of Things (IoT) is more and more a reality, and every day the number of connected objects increases. The growth is practically exponential -there are currently about 8 billion and expected to reach 21 billion in 2025. The applications of these devices are very diverse and range from home automation, through traffic monitoring or pollution, to sensors to monitor our health or improve our performance. While the potential of their applications seems to be unlimited, the cyber-security of these devices and their communications is critical for a flourishing deployment. Random Number Generators (RNGs) are essential to many security tasks such as seeds for key-generation or nonces used in authentication protocols. Till now, True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) are mainly based on physical phenomena, but there is a new trend that uses signals from our body (e.g., electrocardiograms) as an entropy source. Inspired by the last wave, we propose a new TRNG based on gait data (six 3-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers sensors over the subjects). We test both the quality of the entropic source (NIST SP800-90B) and the quality of the random bits generated (ENT, DIEHARDER and NIST 800-22). From this in-depth analysis, we can conclude that: 1) the gait data is a good source of entropy for random bit generation; 2) our proposed TRNG outputs bits that behave like a random variable. All this confirms the feasibility and the excellent properties of the proposed generator.