Screen fingerprints: A novel modality for active authentication

The authors propose a new biometric modality, called a screen fingerprint, for active authentication. A screen fingerprint is acquired by taking a screen recording of the computer being used and extracting discriminative visual features from the recording. The authors demonstrate that the screen fingerprint of an operator captures enough unique human qualities to be usable as a biometric for authentication. The also discuss the advantages over other traditional active authentication modalities. This article is part of a special issue on security.