The inherent weakness of typical mobile device unlocking
approaches (PIN, password, graphic pattern) is that they
demand time and attention, leading a majority of end users
to disable them, effectively lowering device security. We
propose a method for unlocking mobile devices by shaking
them together, implicitly passing the unlocked state from
one device to another. One obvious use case includes a
locked mobile phone and a wrist watch, which remains
unlocked as long as strapped to the user’s wrist. Shaking
both devices together generates a one-time unlocking event
for the phone without the user interacting with the screen.
We explicitly analyze the usability critical impact of
shaking duration with respect to the level of security.
Results indicate that unlocking is possible with a true
match rate of 0.795 and true non match rate of 0.867 for a
shaking duration as short as two seconds.
@inproceedings{Findling_14_ShakeUnlockSecurelyUnlock, author = {Findling, Rainhard Dieter and Muaaz, Muhammad and Hintze, Daniel and Mayrhofer, Ren\'e}, title = { {ShakeUnlock}: Securely Unlock Mobile Devices by Shaking them Together}, booktitle = {Proc. {MoMM} 2014: 12th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia}, year = {2014}, pages = {165--174}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, month = dec, publisher = {ACM Press}, note = { {Winner of the MoMM 2014 best paper award}}, booktitle_short = {Proc. {MoMM} 2014}, day = {8--10}, documenturl = {http://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/downloads/publications/MoMM2014-Shake-Unlock-on-Wrist.pdf}, doi = {10.1145/2684103.2684122}, eventurl = {http://www.iiwas.org/conferences/momm2014/}, isbn = {978-1-4503-3008-4}, keywords = {accelerometer; authentication; frequency domain; mobile devices; shaking; time series analysis; usability;}, location = {Kaohsiung, Taiwan}, pubtype = {conference} }