Chapter Eleven. Identifying Users from Their Typing Patterns

Alen Peacock, Xian Ke, and Matt Wilkerson

AS DEFICIENCIES OF TRADITIONAL PASSWORD-BASED ACCESS SYSTEMS BECOME MORE ACUTE, researchers have turned their focus to keystroke biometrics , an approach that seeks to identify individuals by their typing characteristics. Since 1980, a number of techniques have been proposed for accurately harnessing a user's unique typing pattern for system authentication and other novel uses. But do these systems deliver on their promise to increase system security and simultaneously ease the burden of logging into systems and remembering passwords? And do databases of users' keystroke profiles present additional privacy concerns?