Biometric Authentication through a Virtual Keyboard for Smartphones

Security through biometric keystroke authentication on mobile phones with a capacitive display and a QWERTZ-layout is a new approach. Keystroke on mobile phones with a 12-key layout has already shown the possibility for authentication on these devices. But with hardware changes, new general requirements have been arisen.

In this paper, we focus on the authentication with keystroke dynamics. Therefore, we are presenting new implemented keyboard layouts to show differences between a 12-key layout and a QWERTZ-layout. In addition, we compare a numerical (PIN) and alphabetic (password) input for mobile phones. For this, we added new features for a keystroke authentication with a capacitive display. With the knowledge of the fault rates, we discuss the improvement of the security for keystroke dynamics with different virtual keyboard layouts. Our results show, even with new hardware factors, that an authentication via keystroke dynamics is possible.