A team of University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body, potentially linking to biometric authentication.The system uses benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices.The team has developed a solution that shows the data which authenticates your identity can travel securely through your body to a receiver embedded in a device.”Fingerprint sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we've shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.The team says its “on-body” transmissions offer a more secure way to transmit authenticating information between devices that touch parts of your body – such as a smart door lock or wearable medical device – and a phone or device that confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.A paper presented in September at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany listed the details of the project.”Let's say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock,” said co-lead author Merhdad Hessar, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. “I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air.”The research team tested the technique on iPhone and other fingerprint sensors, as well as Lenovo laptop trackpads and the Adafruit capacitive touchpad. In tests with 10 different subjects, they were able to generate usable on-body transmissions on people of different heights, weights and body types. The system also worked when subjects were in motion – including while they walked and moved their arms.The team has said that data can be transmitted through the body even faster if fingerprint sensor manufacturers provide more access to their software.
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