Hand gestures to improve smart card security by adding an additional authentication factor

Adding support for specific hand gestures or combinations of hand gestures might represent the future of smart card security, researchers at HID Global believe.

As a news report on the matter has revealed, the company is actively working on a software solution that would enable users to perform a series of hand-motion sequences to authorize operation of an RFID smart card.

Basically, this technology would help create an additional authentication factor, since the smart card would have to be moved in a particular, predefined way in order for the RFID chip to unlock its unique ID. Apparently, any variation of forward, backward, up, down, left and right and including rotations and sliding motions will be supported, thus granting users quite a high level of freedom in terms of gesture setting.

However, this would also bring about a slight change to the standard smart card design, since the new cards would include a battery-powered mechanism such as a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) or accelerometer that is capable of sensing movement of the RFID device.

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