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Taprint: Secure Text Input for Commodity Smart Wristbands

Smart wristband has become a dominant device in the wearable ecosystem, providing versatile functions such as fitness tracking, mobile payment, and transport ticketing. However, the small form-factor, low-profile hardware interfaces and computational resources limit their capabilities in security checking. Many wristband devices have recently witnessed alarming vulnerabilities, e.g., personal data leakage and payment fraud, due to the lack of authentication and access control. To fill this gap, we propose a secure text pin input system, namely Taprint, which extends a virtual number pad on the back of a user's hand. Taprint builds on the key observation that the hand "landmarks'', especially finger knuckles, bear unique vibration characteristics when being tapped by the user herself. It thus uses the tapping vibrometry as biometrics to authenticate the user, while distinguishing the tapping locations. Taprint reuses the inertial measurement unit in the wristband, "overclocks'' its sampling rate to extrapolate fine-grained features, and further refines the features to enhance the uniqueness and reliability. Extensive experiments on 128 users demonstrate that Taprint achieves a high accuracy (96%) of keystrokes recognition. It can authenticate users, even through a single-tap, at extremely low error rate (2.4%), and under various practical usage disturbances.