Smartphone sensors leave trackable fingerprints

Researchers have found that fingerprints exist within smartphone sensors.

Research by Associate Professor Romit Roy Choudhury and graduate students Sanorita Dey and Nirupam Roy has demonstrated that these fingerprints exist within smartphone sensors, Sanorita Dey, Associate Professor Romit Roy Chourdhury, and Nirupam Roy.

Other collaborators on this project are Professors Srihari Nelakuditi and Wenyuan Xu at the University of South Carolina (USC).

The researchers focused specifically on the accelerometer, a sensor that tracks three-dimensional movements of the phone - essential for countless applications, including pedometers, sleep monitoring, mobile gaming - but their findings suggest that other sensors could leave equally unique fingerprints.

Of course, these fingerprints are only visible when accelerometer data signals are analyzed in detail. Most applications do not require this level of analysis, yet the data shared with all applications - your favorite game, your pedometer - bear the mark. Should someone want to perform this analysis, they could do so.

The researchers tested more than 100 devices over the course of nine months: 80 standalone accelerometer chips used in popular smartphones, 25 Android phones, and 2 tablets.

The accelerometers in all permutations were selected from different manufacturers, to ensure that the fingerprints weren't simply defects resulting from a particular production line. Example demonstrating how accelerometer data shared with separate traffic and health applications could indicate Bob's location.

With 96 percent accuracy, the researchers could discriminate one sensor from another.

The findings have been published at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS).