What we work on
Personal mobile and wearable devices have become the trusted vault for identity, health, location, and payments. Yet the same trends that make these devices indispensable, short-lived connections, miniaturized form factors, and minimal user interfaces, make traditional security mechanisms like passwords and complex pairing flows impractical.
The lab designs authentication, pairing, and secure-sensing primitives that work transparently on smartphones, smartwatches, earbuds, and embedded camera modules. Our methods derive shared secrets from the physical context the user is already in (vibration, ambient electromagnetic radiation, image-sensor noise), instead of asking the user to type a passkey or trust a remote service.
Selected systems
- AeroKey, over-the-air authentication using ambient electromagnetic radiation. No extra hardware on the device.
- SyncVibe, pairing via short bursts of physical vibration between devices in direct contact.
- PARAVIRT, userland container isolation that lets untrusted apps coexist on a single mobile device.
