Billy Steele

Researchers teach smartphones to recognize your activity, lock out everyone else

Swipe patterns, passwords and fingerprint scanners are useful for keeping that mobile device locked down from the outside, but what happens once that code is cracked?

Well, cybersecurity researchers at Georgia Tech have developed LatentGesture that continuously monitors gadgets for intruders based on taps and swipes. If the system detects any use patterns that vary from the observed user profiles, it locks the device down.

"The system learns a person's 'touch signature,' then constantly compares it to how the current user is interacting with the device," said College of Computing assistant professor Polo Chau.