Gesture-Based Soft Authentication

This paper presents a novel authentication strategy for Bluetooth-equipped smartwatches. We use the built-in smartwatch sensors to detect whether two users have shaken hands. If this is the case each devices give to the other a soft authentication privilege, which is suitable for applications with relaxed security needs (for instance, an application to exchange business cards). We evaluate the system using different machine learning techniques and we investigate their performance in the dimensions of accuracy and energy consumption.