Using ambient audio in secure mobile phone communication

We study the use of ambient audio as a seed to non-interactively and communication-free generate a secure cryptographic key among mobile distributed devices. We have implemented an ambient audio-based secure device pairing on android mobile phones. This paper discusses practical problems we encountered related to hardware, environment and time synchronisation, introduces approaches for feature generation and details results from our experimental case studies. In the case study, we consider the impact of inter-device distance on the quality of generated keys.

[1]  Bernt Schiele,et al.  Smart-Its Friends: A Technique for Users to Easily Establish Connections between Smart Artefacts , 2001, UbiComp.

[2]  René Mayrhofer,et al.  The Candidate Key Protocol for Generating Secret Shared Keys from Similar Sensor Data Streams , 2007, ESAS.

[3]  Ton Kalker,et al.  A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System With an Efficient Search Strategy , 2003 .

[4]  Peter A. Dinda,et al.  Indoor localization without infrastructure using the acoustic background spectrum , 2011, MobiSys '11.

[5]  René Mayrhofer,et al.  Shake Well Before Use: Authentication Based on Accelerometer Data , 2007, Pervasive.

[6]  Diana K. Smetters,et al.  Talking to Strangers: Authentication in Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks , 2002, NDSS.

[7]  David A. Ross,et al.  Survey and Evaluation of Audio Fingerprinting Schemes for Mobile Query-by-Example Applications , 2011, ISMIR.

[8]  Wade Trappe,et al.  ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals , 2011, MobiSys '11.

[9]  Avery Wang,et al.  An Industrial Strength Audio Search Algorithm , 2003, ISMIR.

[10]  Ton Kalker,et al.  A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System , 2002, ISMIR.

[11]  René Mayrhofer,et al.  Spontaneous mobile device authentication based on sensor data , 2008, Inf. Secur. Tech. Rep..

[12]  Daniel P. W. Ellis,et al.  Fingerprinting to Identify Repeated Sound Events in Long-Duration Personal Audio Recordings , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - ICASSP '07.

[13]  Stephan Sigg,et al.  Context-based security: state of the art, open research topics and a case study , 2011, CASEMANS '11.

[14]  Meinard Müller,et al.  Audio Matching via Chroma-Based Statistical Features , 2005, ISMIR.

[15]  Mario Huemer,et al.  Key Generation Based on Acceleration Data of Shaking Processes , 2007, UbiComp.

[16]  Michael K. Reiter,et al.  Seeing-is-believing: using camera phones for human-verifiable authentication , 2005, 2005 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P'05).

[17]  Pedro Cano,et al.  A Review of Audio Fingerprinting , 2005, J. VLSI Signal Process..

[18]  Mario Huemer,et al.  Innovative Key Generation Approach to Encrypt Wireless Communication in Personal Area Networks , 2007, IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 - IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference.

[19]  Shumeet Baluja,et al.  Content Fingerprinting Using Wavelets , 2006 .

[20]  Romit Roy Choudhury,et al.  SurroundSense: mobile phone localization via ambience fingerprinting , 2009, MobiCom '09.

[21]  Michael Sirivianos,et al.  Loud and Clear: Human-Verifiable Authentication Based on Audio , 2006, 26th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'06).

[22]  Yusheng Ji,et al.  PINtext: A Framework for Secure Communication Based on Context , 2011, MobiQuitous.

[23]  Eyal de Lara,et al.  Amigo: Proximity-Based Authentication of Mobile Devices , 2007, UbiComp.