Computer security from a new angle: your typing style is your fingerprint

Email this article to a friend

Printable Version

Articles Related to This Article: • Seagate launches Full Disk Encryption hard drives to protect user data from theft • The inside scoop: Natural Health Products Expo West industry event • NaturalNews emerges as top truly independent natural health news site Support NaturalNews advertisers - Advertise with NaturalNews Help support NaturalNews with health books and educational programs from Truth Publishing: • Swine Flu Advanced Preparedness • 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health • Raw In Ten Minutes (recipes) • How to Halt Diabetes in 25 Days ... and much more.

This is fascinating security news, sounding almost like science fiction at first. Then again, it also makes a whole lot of sense: identifying users by the way they type.

Consider: each person's typing style is unique in overall speed, speed between letter pairs, use of the backspace key, and so on. Profile these typing characteristics for ten people and you, too, can tell who's on the keyboard just by looking at these statistics.

This falls under the category of what I call "behavioral metrics" for identification of end users. A similar effort is underway by law enforcement authorities to identify people by the way they walk (no kidding: it's called "gait analysis" and it's based on the idea that people have unique walks).

Naturally, there are also the usual biometric methods for identification: voiceprint, fingerprint, retinal scans and so on. And there's the lowly password, which turns out to be extremely insecure in real world use due to the fact that most people use passwords that are simultaneously easy to remember and easy to guess.

But typing behavior analysis offers something much better: an innate password, of sorts, that requires no memorization and is virtually impossible to forge. Consider: could you sit down at a keyboard and type like another person? Exactly like another person? I doubt it. Unless your motor skills match theirs almost perfectly, there are going to be rather obvious differences between your typing patterns and theirs. Furthermore, it seems virtually impossible to learn how another person types simply by watching them type, so unlike passwords which are rendered useless as soon as somebody watches you type one in, typing pattern analysis remains secure even when conducted in full view! One more thing: it can be done in software only, so the costs of this technology are by definition dramatically lower than anything requiring hardware (fingerprint scanning, retinal scanning, or other biometric security systems). This results in typing behavior security having unique advantages that simply aren't present in other approaches to computer security and user identification. The only drawback (and yes, there is one) is that identification is nowhere near instant. It takes time (up to 60 seconds, perhaps) for the software to gather enough typing data to make a decision on user authentication. And, of course, there's the problem of typing when you've just come in from a Winter blizzard. Frozen hands don't work as well as warm, fluid ones. Will this software lock you out of your own computer until you warm up with a mug of hot chocolate? Might make a nice excuse at work, but this would hardly win customers at the corporate level. We'll have to watch this one and see how it turns out in the real world.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics.


Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter

Related CounterThink Cartoons:

Related Articles: • Seagate launches Full Disk Encryption hard drives to protect user data from theft • The inside scoop: Natural Health Products Expo West industry event • NaturalNews emerges as top truly independent natural health news site	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/000026_computer_security_natural_health_renewable_energy.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial use OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. Embed article link: (copy HTML code below): <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/000026_computer_security_natural_health_renewable_energy.html">Computer security from a new angle: your typing style is your fingerprint</a>