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Life’s Good
You know what’s almost as annoying as losing your keys?
Forgetting your passwords...
Hey guys, Amy on the Internet with DNews today, and I’m not the only one online.
We live a lot of our lives online, which means we end up having a lot of accounts requiring
passwords, anything from email and online banking to that one time you had to create
an account just to buy an amazing pair of shoes.
So it’s maybe unsurprising that we tend to get a little lazy with our passwords, even
though every password-protected account holds personal data we wouldn’t want made public.
Every year passwords are leaked, and SplashData pulled together the 25 most common passwords
of 2014, out of 3.3 million that were leaked, and it shows just how lazy we are.
A lot of people pick things they type quickly and easily based on the arrangement of the
key board.
Numbers in sequential order are common, as are letters in the order they appear on the
keyboard.
“qwerty” it turns out, it a pretty common password.
Obvious combinations like “abc123” or “111111” are also common, and so are words
like “superman,” “batman,” “football,” and “dragon.”
But what if a password wasn't your only way into your online accounts?
What if the way you type your password was part of the password?
A team of scientists led by Jun Chen of the Georgia Institute of Technology say they’ve
developed a self-cleaning, self-powered smart keyboard that can identify computer users
by the way they type, which could help prevent unauthorized users from accessing your accounts.
Their research was published in the journal ACS Nano and funded by the U.S. Department
of Energy.
The team’s smart keyboard was designed to sense typing patterns, including typing speed
and strength of keystroke.
These physical characteristics vary from person to person, meaning the smart keyboard can
distinguish between users.
Someone could know your password, but if they try to type it on a smart keyboard it wouldn’t
work.
Sensing the specific keystrokes of its owner, it would lock the attempted intruder out,
alerting you to the attempted breach while also recording and identifying the intruder.
And this keyboard even has some bonus smart features.
It can harness the energy generated from typing, converting the mechanical stimuli applied
to the keyboard into electronic signals that can power either the keyboard itself or another
small device.
Another bonus: its surface coating actually repels first and grime!
But it’s possible that passwords, even those typed on a smart keyboard, will soon become
a thing of the past.
At CES this year in Las Vegas, Biometric IT devices were touted as the hottest new thing
in online security.
Some cell phones already unlock with fingerprint recognition instead of a password, a technology
some companies are incorporating into biometric digital wallets from companies like HyprKey.
So while this smart keyboard is still just a prototype with no clear timeline for commercial
availability, it’s still a pretty amazing entry in the growing field of biometric security.
So what do you guys think about smart keyboards?
Cool or creepy?
Let us know in the comments below or you can catch me on Twitter as @astVintageSpace.
And don’t forget to subscribe for more DNews every day of the week.