Leveraging speech and ultrasonic signals toward articulation-based smartphone user authentication

Aslan B. Wong, Ziqi Huang, Kaishun Wu

Abstract: This paper presents a breakthrough framework for smartphone user authentication by analyzing the physiology and behavior of articulation, namely the vocal tract, tongue position, and lip movement, to expose individual uniqueness during uttering. The main idea is to leverage a smartphone's speaker and microphone to transmit and receive speech and ultrasonic signals, construct identity-related features, and determine whether the samples are legitimate users or attackers. The proposed system requires a smaller number of samples by utilizing single utterances resulting that the system resisting playback and mimicry attacks with an average accuracy of 99% in three different scenarios.