Leveraging Sensor Fingerprinting for Mobile Device Authentication

Hupperich Thomas, Hosseini Henry, Holz T


Abstract

Device fingerprinting is a technique for identification and recognition of clients and widely used in practice for Web tracking and fraud prevention. While common systems depend on software attributes, sensor-based fingerprinting relies on hardware imperfections and thus opens up new possibilities for device authentication. Recent work focusses on accelerometers as easily accessible sensors of modern mobile devices. However, it has remained unclear if device recognition via sensor-based fingerprinting is feasible under real-world conditions. 

In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of a specialized feature set for sensor-based device fingerprinting and compare the results to featureless fingerprinting techniques based on raw measurements. Furthermore, we evaluate other sensor types—like gravity and magnetic field sensors— as well as combinations of different sensors concerning their suitability for the purpose of device authentication. We demonstrate that combinations of different sensors yield precise device fingerprints when evaluating the approach on a real-world data set consisting of empirical measurement results obtained from almost 5,000 devices.

Keywords
Device fingerprinting; Sensor fingerprinting; Device authentication



Publication type
Research article in proceedings (conference)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
Published

Year
2016

Conference
13th Con­fe­rence on De­tec­tion of In­tru­si­ons and Mal­wa­re & Vul­nerabi­li­ty As­sess­ment (DIMVA)

Venue
San Se­bas­tián

Book title
DIMVA 2016: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment

Editor
Caballero, Juan; Zurutuza, Urko; Rodríguez, Ricardo J.

Start page
377

End page
396

Publisher
Springer

Place
Spain

Language
English

DOI