Device Presence Validation via Environmental Corroboration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional authentication methods for online transactions are inconvenient for users, requiring additional input beyond what they know, such as passwords, and can be cumbersome.
Innovation Solution
The technique involves devices in a user's possession corroborating environmental information, like wireless networks, to verify their proximity and authenticate the user without requiring user input, utilizing circuitry in devices like smartphones and computers to automatically send environmental readings to an authentication server.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional authentication methods require additional user input (such as passwords and token codes), then security is improved, but user convenience deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses environmental sensors already present in the user's devices to automatically generate authentication data without requiring user input. The devices self-serve by collecting environmental information (wireless networks, Bluetooth devices, cameras, microphones) and submitting this data to the authentication server, eliminating the need for users to manually enter passwords or token codes while maintaining security through environmental corroboration
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces manual user actions (typing passwords, entering token codes) with automated environmental sensing and data submission. The mechanical interaction between user and authentication system is substituted by electronic sensors automatically detecting environmental conditions and transmitting this data for authentication verification
2Ease of operation
If environmental readings are automatically collected and compared between devices, then user convenience is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system leverages existing multi-functional devices (smartphones, laptops) that already contain various sensors for other purposes. These devices perform environmental sensing for authentication in addition to their primary functions, avoiding the need to introduce dedicated new hardware and reducing overall system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The authentication server acts as an intermediary that receives environmental data from multiple devices, performs the comparison operations, and determines authentication outcomes. This centralizes the complex processing logic in a single location rather than requiring complex peer-to-peer verification protocols between devices
Data Source
AI summary
An improved technique involves authenticating a user based on ability of devices in the user's possession to corroborate environmental information between each other. As part of an authentication process, at least a primary device and a secondary device belonging to a user take readings of a particular set of environmental conditions, such as wireless networks that are active in a room in which they are contained. An authentication server can then verify that the primary and secondary devices are in the same room by corroborating the readings of the environmental conditions read from the primary and secondary devices, and base an authentication result on the corroboration.