cs.LGAug 17, 2026

Transfer Learning of Keystroke Dynamics for Cross-Device User Authentication

Authors: Nuwan KaluarachchiSevvandi KandanaarachchiKristen MooreArathi ArakalaConrad Sanderson

Abstract

Keystroke dynamics (typing patterns) can be used as a behavioural biometric modality for user authentication, with applications such as fraud prevention. While the modality has been shown to work well for single device authentication, its application to cross-device scenarios is more challenging. Dynamics learned on one device (eg., phone) may not be directly applicable to authentication on a secondary device with a different form factor (eg., tablet) due to changes in typing patterns that can lead to distribution drifts. To address this, we propose a cross-device user authentication system based on inductive transfer learning, where keystroke dynamics learned on one device are adapted to a secondary device. The adapted data is then combined with necessarily limited training data for the secondary device, which is used to robustly train a binary classifier. Furthermore, an extended set of keystroke features is used to better capture discriminative dynamics. Experiments on the BBMAS dataset show that proposed system achieves an equal error rate of 14.2% for the cross-device scenario, surpassing previous methods.

Explore similar work

May 5, 2026cs.CR

DECKER: Domain-invariant Embedding for Cross-Keyboard Extraction and Recognition

Acoustic side-channel attacks (ASCA) on keyboards pose a significant security risk, as keystrokes can be inferred from typing acoustics, revealing sensitive information. Prior ASCA studies are limited by small-scale datasets with restricted diversity in users, keyboards, and environments, constraining analysis across devices, microphones, and noise conditions. We introduce HEAR, a dataset designed to study ASCA along three axes: keyboard generalization, noise adaptation, and user bias. HEAR contains recordings from 53 participants using 37 laptop keyboards, collected in three realistic settings: (1) external microphone capture, (2) device microphone capture without network noise, and (3) VoIP-based streaming capture. This enables controlled evaluation across users, keyboards, and environments. On HEAR, we establish an ASCA benchmark spanning conventional features and pre-trained representations from raw audio and spectrograms in unimodal and multimodal settings. We propose DECKER, a domain-invariant keystroke inference framework with four stages: (1) Keyboard Signature Normalization to reduce device coloration, (2) domain-adversarial disentanglement to suppress keyboard identity, (3) supervised cross-keyboard contrastive alignment to enforce key consistency, and (4) Acoustic Style Randomization to synthesize unseen keyboard responses. We further explore sentence-level inference using an LLM-based post-processing layer to refine keystroke sequences via linguistic context. Results on HEAR show DECKER improves keystroke identification over strong baselines, particularly in cross-keyboard and cross-user settings, with further gains from language-model rectification. These findings highlight that ASCA remains effective across diverse users, devices, and noisy environments, underscoring its practical security risk.
Bikrant Bikram Pratap Maurya, Nitin Choudhury, Daksh Agarwal +1
Jun 20, 2026cs.CR

Continuous Behavioral Authentication via Multi-Expert BERT Log Analysis for Secure Data Sharing

Continuous authentication for mobile and zero-trust systems requires nonintrusive evidence confirming the enrolled user-device context remains valid after initial login. This paper presents a BERT log analysis framework for continuous behavioral authentication using Android system logs. The proposed pipeline parses logcat streams into event templates and dynamic variables, pre-trains a domain-adapted BERT encoder on Android log syntax, and fine-tunes three expert models for network/device identity, battery-transition timing, and Wi-Fi topology. The expert confidence scores are fused through a log-space transformation and a 5-nearest-neighbor distance classifier to generate a normality score that is provided to a Policy Decision Point (PDP) for risk-aware access control. Experiments on normal traces, controlled anomaly injections, and benign Wi-Fi perturbations indicate that multi-expert BERT log analysis can detect semantic, battery-timing, and topology deviations in the evaluated setting while maintaining sub-1% False Positive Rate (FPR). The results suggest that Android system logs are a practical sensor-free signal for continuous authentication and user-device context assurance.
Stergios Lantzos, Ilias Syrigos, Apostolos Apostolaras +1
May 7, 2026cs.HC

Enhancing Eye Movement Biometrics for User Authentication via Continuous Gaze Offset Score Fusion

Eye movement biometrics (EMB) use subject-specific gaze dynamics for user authentication and identification. Recent deep learning-based EMB systems achieve strong performance by modeling temporal eye movement behavior. However, these systems typically overlook continuous gaze offset, despite prior evidence that it contains user-discriminative information. This work examines whether continuous gaze offset can improve biometric performance when combined with existing biometric features. We evaluate linear and nonlinear fusion methods on two publicly available datasets, collected via the lab-grade eye tracker and virtual reality headset across multiple tasks and observation durations. Results indicate that fusion offers performance benefits on both datasets, particularly when using nonlinear fusion. Additionally, fusing biometric information across multiple tasks further improves authentication performance. These findings support the hypothesis that continuous gaze offset may serve as useful auxiliary information under conditions of degraded or noisy eye tracking.
Hashim Aziz, Mehedi Hasan Raju, Oleg V. Komogortsev