Researchers want to use sweat as a means of identification for smartphones
Researchers at the University of Albany in the US state of New York have proposed a new biometric authentication method to unlock smartphones, for example. This method is based on scanning the chemical composition of sweat.
The scientists analyze with this authentication method, a user’s sweat, which builds an amino acid profile of the user. This profile is unique per person. The profile is then stored on the used device and every time someone wants to unlock the device, it is used to identify the user.
According to the researchers, the use of sweat as an identifier is a new method that is not easy to imitate by unauthorized third parties. The reason for that is that you sweat quite a lot metabolites such as contains amino acids, which can be used for an authentication analysis. A person does not have to sweat for the analysis; our hands and fingers are full of sweat coming from eccrine glands. This sweat has a fairly high concentration of substances, which facilitates its analysis.
Building a unique personal profile takes some time. During a certain period of time, a user has to measure his own sweat values at several times a day. This cannot be limited to a single measurement moment, because someone’s sweat profile, for example, looks very different in the middle of the night than during the day. Factors such as age, gender, race and the psychological state of the person also play a role. Our hormones regulate the presence of the different substances in our sweat, and because everyone’s hormone levels differ, it is not possible for two people to have the same profile, according to the researchers.
With this method, the researchers not only want to improve existing authentication methods; According to the inventors, it can also be an effective independent method for certain disabled people, who, for example, cannot move their fingers or cannot move them properly. According to the scientists, the method has been successfully tested in the laboratory, but it still needs to be expanded and further developed by technicians before it can actually be used. When that may be the case is not clear.
More authentication methods have been proposed that make use of certain characteristics of the human body. For example, scientists have developed an identification system that can identify users and allow them to log in by measuring their heart and heart rate. A way has also been developed to unlock a smartphone by making a scan of certain body parts, such as an ear or palm. This technology works through the capacitive touchscreen of the smartphone. By holding a body part against the screen, a scan can be made of it, which identifies the user.
The research is like a paper published in the scientific journal ChemPhysChem, under the title Promises and Challenges in Continuous Tracking Utilizing Amino Acids in Skin Secretions for Active Multi-Factor Biometric Authentication for Cybersecurity.