Secondary User Authentication Based on Mobile Devices Location

Abstract

We propose a new authentication method based on identifying the ownership and location of the mobile devices. It can be assumed that the majority of the authenticating users will have a cellular device, a personal data assistant (PDA), or a smart phone device and, therefore, such devices are prime candidates to be used as another form of secondary authentication device. The proposed system uses the identifier pair (BSSID and SSID) and the corresponding signal strength in a wireless environment as a relative location marker for the mobile device. The marked locations are update to a centralized server database. This information can then be used as a secondary means of authentication by associating the authenticating user with the location of the authentication device