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SPIES Lab, Computer Science and Engineering

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Gametrics

Towards Attack-Resilient Behavioral Authentication with Simple Cognitive Games

Authenticating a user based on her unique behavioral biometric traits has been extensively researched over the past few years. The most researched behavioral biometrics techniques are based on keystroke and mouse dynamics. These schemes, however, have been shown to be vulnerable to human-based and robotic attacks that attempt to mimic the user’s behavioral pattern to impersonate the user.

In this project, we aim to verify the user’s identity through the use of active, cognition-based user interaction in the authentication process. Such interaction boasts to provide two key advantages. First, it may enhance the security of the authentication process as multiple rounds of active interaction would serve as a mechanism to prevent against several types of attacks, including zero-effort attack, expert trained attackers, and automated attacks. Second, it may enhance the usability of the authentication process by actively engaging the user in the process.

We explore the cognitive authentication paradigm through very simplistic interactive challenges, called Dynamic Cognitive Games, which involve objects floating around within the images, where the user’s task is to match the objects with their respective target(s) and drag/drop them to the target location(s). Specifically, we introduce, build and study Gametrics (Game-based biometrics”), an authentication mechanism based on the unique way the user solves such simple challenges captured by multiple features related to her cognitive abilities and mouse dynamics. Based on a comprehensive data set collected in both online and lab settings, we show that Gametrics can identify the users with a high accuracy (false negative rates, FNR, as low as 0.02) while rejecting zero-effort attackers (false positive rates, FPR, as low as 0.02). Moreover, Gametrics shows promising results in defending against expert attackers that try to learn and later mimic the user’s pattern of solving the challenges (FPR for expert human attacker as low as 0.03). Furthermore, we argue that the proposed biometrics is hard to be replayed or spoofed by automated means, such as robots or malware attacks.

Challenges instances. Targets, on the left, are static; moving objects, on the right, are mobile. The user task is to drag-drop a subset of the moving objects (answer objects) to their corresponding targets.

Challenge instances. Targets, on the left, are static; moving objects, on the right, are mobile. The user task is to drag-drop a subset of the moving objects (answer objects) to their corresponding targets.

People

Faculty

  • Nitesh Saxena

Student

  • Manar Mohamed (@UAB; PhD 2016; now Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University)

Publication

  • Challenge-Response Behavioral Mobile Authentication: A Comparative Study of Graphical Patterns and Cognitive Games
    Manar Mohamed, Prakash Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena.
    In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2019
  • Gametrics: Towards Attack-Resilient Behavioral Authentication with Simple Cognitive Games
    Manar Mohamed, and Nitesh Saxena.
    In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2016
    [pdf]
  • CATCHA: When Cats  Track Your Movements Online
    Prakash Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, Ajaya Neupane and Kiavash Satvat
    International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC), November, 2019

Recent News

  • “Neuro Security” work got a MURI award from AFOSR March 22, 2023
  • Paper accepted to Oakland 2023 March 14, 2023
  • Paper (conditionally) accepted to MobiSys 2023 February 27, 2023
  • Paper accepted to USENIX Security 2023 February 21, 2023
  • 2 full papers accepted to WiSec 2023 January 30, 2023
  • Cybersecurity Program Led By Dr. Saxena Ranks Best! January 26, 2023
  • EarSpy in Media January 26, 2023
  • Dr. Saxena is a Co-PI on Thematic AI Lab November 28, 2022
  • Paper accepted to PMC 2022 November 28, 2022
  • Paper accepted to ICISC 2022 November 28, 2022
  • A New Grant from NSA October 17, 2022
  • Dr. Saxena appointed as a Dean’s Research Fellow October 17, 2022
  • Dr. Saxena to lead a new SaTC Medium project on Election Security July 16, 2022
  • SPIES Lab’s 12th PhD Graduate — Anuradha Mandal July 16, 2022
  • SPIES Lab’s 11th PhD Graduate – Payton Walker July 6, 2022
  • Two papers accepted to PST 2022 June 9, 2022
  • Paper accepted to ICDCS 2022 April 4, 2022
  • Paper accepted CHIL 2022 March 19, 2022
  • 2 papers accepted to WiSec 2022 March 19, 2022
  • Paper accepted to EuroS&P 2022 February 12, 2022

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