A study of keyboard dynamics

Keyboard dynamics is concerned with the way in which people type and with the possible uses of this infornnation to recognize computer users. The distributions of interkey times for each pair of characters typed by different subjects on a given keyboard are analysed and some pairs or combinations of pairs that have the power of discriminating between users' typing are chosen. A reference profile, which consists of some statistics that uniquely identify the user, is built as a basis for verifying a sample of future typing. The smallest sample size of interkey times for which reasonably reliable discrimination is possible needs to be determined. This thesis describes progress made using this approach to the problem of user verification.