Users usually authenticate to mobile devices before using
them (e.g. PIN, password), but devices do not do the same
to users. Revealing the authentication secret to a
non-authenticated device potentially enables attackers to
obtain the secret, by replacing the device with an
identical-looking malicious device. The revealed
authentication secret could be transmitted to the attackers
immediately, who then conveniently authenticate to the real
device. Addressing this attack scenario, we analyze
different approaches towards mobile device-to-user (D2U)
authentication, for which we provide an overview of
advantages/drawbacks, potential risks and device
authentication data bandwidth estimations. We further
analyze vibration as one D2U feedback channel that is
unobtrusive and hard to eavesdrop, including a user study
to estimate vibration pattern recognition using a setup of
\sim7 bits per second (b/s). Study findings indicate
that users are able to distinguish vibration patterns with
median correctness of 97.5% (without taking training
effects into account) – which indicates that vibration
could act as authentication feedback channel and should be
investigated further in future research.
@inproceedings{Findling_15_TowardsDeviceto, author = {Findling, Rainhard Dieter and Mayrhofer, Ren\'e}, title = {Towards Device-to-User Authentication: Protecting Against Phishing Hardware by Ensuring Mobile Device Authenticity using Vibration Patterns}, booktitle = {14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM'15)}, year = {2015}, pages = {131--136}, month = dec, publisher = {ACM}, doi = {10.1145/2836041.2836053} }