By: Cassidy Delamarter, University Communications and Marketing
Researchers at the 最新天美传媒 are in the process of licensing a new, patented technology that can more accurately confirm an individual鈥檚 identity and location using their voice. The technology, dubbed 鈥淗ere I am,鈥� creates an unforgeable, encrypted digital certificate on a user鈥檚 cellular device.
The certificate is permanently verifiable and can be used for authentication in a variety of scenarios, such as improving employee accountability, protection for victims of domestic abuse and criminal justice. The goal is to license the technology directly to telecom providers that utilize location data. The providers can then offer it to companies to integrate into their own apps, such as ride-sharing services, helping them better protect drivers and passengers.
USF computer science and engineering Professor Sriram Chellappan spent the last several years brainstorming inventions to protect people from being wrongly accused of crimes.
鈥淲hen law enforcement is investigating a crime, it is very common for those who are detained to be unable to generate verifiable alibis and that becomes a critical liability,鈥� Chellappan said. 鈥淭hey can鈥檛 return to work, may lose their job and as a result, lose their income. I thought there must be a way to fix this and prove people鈥檚 true location, when needed.鈥�
It wasn鈥檛 until 2018 over a cup of coffee with Balaji Padmanabhan, USF professor of information systems and management, that Chellappan鈥檚 pursuit of social justice started to come to life. Together, they discussed the value of a technology that could enable a person to authenticate their location 鈥� a concept that, up until now, did not exist with proven unforgeability.
Although devices can easily be tracked, confirming the identity of the person operating the device during that tracking is more difficult, especially after several years have passed. The team concluded the most efficient way to overcome this hurdle would be to combine a person鈥檚 voice with the location, date and time 鈥� a foolproof way for someone to prove they were at a specific place at a certain time.
鈥淢ost location authentication technologies today mainly authenticate a device, such as a phone, but not the user. Nothing like this exists,鈥� Padmanabhan said. 鈥淚f companies with reliable location identification can offer this as a service, then individual users can easily generate their own authentication as needed and companies, such as ridesharing platforms and financial institutions, can integrate the technology directly into their apps for their employees as an extra layer of protection.鈥�
Computer science and engineering students helped build the Here I Am prototype鈥檚 cryptography 鈥� the techniques that enable unforgeability and ensure privacy of all communications.
In the prototype, a Here I Am user will initiate a request to generate an authentication certificate. The user will then be prompted to read a message out loud. While reading, the user鈥檚 device will record their voice, which is paired by a server with the date, time and precise location data to create a cryptographically verifiable certificate that forever preserves the information on the user鈥檚 device.
The team created three categories of use for the technology: solo, where an individual voluntarily chooses to authenticate themselves; parent-child, where the 鈥減arent,鈥� such as an organization, sends a notification to their employee, the 鈥渃hild,鈥� to authenticate themselves; and ambient, where a user elects to have it automatically authenticate their location every few minutes. To mitigate privacy concerns, the user is in control of the authentication provided in all applications.
The different categories of use allow the technology to have a variety of purposes, such as ride-share companies validating users and locations to protect both riders and drivers, financial institutions validating account owners to approve money transfers and standardized test administrators confirming a student鈥檚 identity to reduce fraud during test taking.
鈥淭he demand to certifiably authenticate a person or an asset at a particular location at any point in time has immense value, that is yet to see the dawn of day,鈥� Chellappan said. 鈥淥ur technology enables just that and could be a game changer to the immense diversity of practical applications.鈥�