Abstract

In the recent years, wearable devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers have enhanced our daily lifes in manifold aspects. However, one of the biggest hassles of our modern digitized world they have not been able to eliminate yet: today almost everyone has to deal with passwords or login credentials that are either too short and insecure or long and hard to memorize. So the question is: How can wearable devices act as a security token in order to replace these passwords? Besides giving an overview of past and current authentication methods with the help of mobile and wearable devices, this thesis describes the development and evaluation of a authentication solution involving Apple’s smartwatch (“Apple Watch”). For this purpose, literature research and a state-of-the art analysis re- garding authentication methods with wearables were undertaken. Successively, a prototype based on these methods was developed and evaluated in terms of us- ability, efficiency and security, both in a websurvey and a lab study. Moreover, different use cases for Two-Factor-Authentication were considered, including the use of the iPhone’s Touch ID, voice recognition, gestures, the watch’s dig- ital crown or tap-based input methods as a second factor. As a result of this work, end customers should be able to authenticate for their mobile or desktop applications with the help of their Apple Watch, thus having a solution at their disposal to unite a secure authentification process with convenience and user experience.

Implementation and Evaluation of Smartwatch-
based Authentication Methods