One-handed Keystroke Biometric Identification Competition
John V. Monaco
1
, Gonzalo Perez
1
, Charles C. Tappert
1
, Patrick Bours
2
, Soumik Mondal
2
, Sudalai
Rajkumar
3
, Aythami Morales
4
, Julian Fierrez
4
and Javier Ortega-Garcia
4
1
Pace University, Pleasantville, New York, USA, {jmonaco,gperez,ctappert}@pace.edu
2
Gjøvik University College, Gjøvik, Norway, {patrick.bours,soumik.mondal}@hig.no
3
Tiger Analytics, Chennai, India, sudalai@tigeranalytics.com
4
Universidad Aut´ onoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, {aythami.morales,javier.ortega,julian.fierrez}@uam.es
Abstract
This work presents the results of the One-handed
Keystroke Biometric Identification Competition (OhKBIC),
an official competition of the 8th IAPR International Con-
ference on Biometrics (ICB). A unique keystroke biomet-
ric dataset was collected that includes freely-typed long-
text samples from 64 subjects. Samples were collected to
simulate normal typing behavior and the severe handicap
of only being able to type with one hand. Competition
participants designed classification models trained on the
normally-typed samples in an attempt to classify an un-
labeled dataset that consists of normally-typed and one-
handed samples. Participants competed against each other
to obtain the highest classification accuracies and submit-
ted classification results through an online system similar
to Kaggle. The classification results and top performing
strategies are described.
1. Introduction
Keystroke biometric applications have been investigated
over the past several decades, attracting both academics and
practitioners. There are commercial products available that
analyze a sequence of keystrokes for human identification,
or provide additional security through password hardening
and continuous authentication REF. It is common to see er-
ror rates below 10% for short text authentication [11], and
below 1% in long text applications [12]. In terms of con-
tinuous authentication, an intruder can accurately be iden-
tified in less than 100 keystrokes [4]. While many perfor-
mance evaluations are derived from normal typing behav-
ior obtained in laboratory or natural settings, there has not
been much research to determine how the performance of
a keystroke biometric system degrades as a result of a user
impairments, such as typing with one hand after having en-
rolled with a normal both-hands typing sample. Such a sce-
nario might be encountered in production or during a field
experiments that impose little or no condition on how the
system should be used.
There are many performance-degrading scenarios that
may be encountered during deployment of a keystroke bio-
metric system. Variations in typing behavior can occur as a
result of distractions, cognitive load, and sickness, to name
a few. Consider the scenario in which a user has enrolled
with normal two-hand typing and later restricted to typing
with only one hand as a result of an injury or multitask-
ing (e.g. using a desktop mouse with one hand while typing
with the other). A robust keystroke biometric system should
be able to handle this situation appropriately, although the
correct response of such a system is not known at this point.
Should the user be re-enrolled with a one-hand sample or
can the user still be identified under this constraint? The
results of this competition can help answer these questions.
2. Benchmark dataset
A unique keystroke biometric dataset was collected
from three online exams administered to undergraduate stu-
dents in an introductory computer science course during a
semester. Each exam contained five essay questions that
required typing a response directly into a web page. Stu-
dents took the three exams through the Moodle learning
platform and their keystrokes were logged by a Javascript
event-logging framework [1] and transmitted to a server.
For the first exam students were instructed to type normally
with both hands, for the second exam with their left hand
only, and for the third exam with their right hand only.
The benchmark dataset consists of 64 students who pro-
vided at least 500 keystrokes on each exam. Approximately
1/3 of all exam attempts occurred in an electronic classroom
on standard desktop computers to ensure instructions were
followed when typing with just one hand. The remaining
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