imagine sitting down at your work keyboard typing in your user name and starting work right away no password needed thats a vision that the defence advanced research projects agency part of the defence department wants to turn into a reality it will distribute research funds to develop software that determines just by the way you type that you are indeed the person you say you are darpas purpose is to sponsor revolutionary highpayoff research for military use but technology developed under darpas auspices the internet itself being only one among many achievements traceable to its initiatives eventually tends to find its way into the civilian world passwords like 6tfcvbnhtfcvbn meet the defence departments definition of strong says richard guidorizzi a program manager at darpa the problem is they dont meet human requirements he says humans arent built to understand random connections of characters guidorizzi made those comments in a talk titled beyond passwords presented last november at a darpa symposium in arlington virginia humans use patterns to make passwords manageable he said he displayed five handwritten passwords each a slight variation of jane123 and all of them easily cracked what id like to do guidorizzi said is move to a world where you sit down at a console you identify yourself and you just start working and the authentication happens in the background invisible to you while you continue to do your work without interruptions no biometric sensors like thumbprint or iris scanners would be used instead he is seeking technology that relies solely on an individuals distinct behavioural characteristics which he calls the cognitive fingerprint experts are trying several approaches to determine users identities solely through their computer behaviour roy maxion a research professor of computer science at carnegie mellon university oversees research on keystroke dynamics including the length of time a user holds down a given key and moves from one particular key to another motions that weve performed countless times professor maxion says are governed by motor control not deliberate thought that is why successfully mimicking keystroke dynamics is physiologically improbable he says he gives this example a computer user holds down a key for an average of 100 milliseconds suppose that a fraudster is trying to mimic a person who is slightly faster than average typically holding the key down for 90 milliseconds then the spoofer is in the dubious position of having to consciously shorten a keypress action by 10 milliseconds professor maxion says having such control doesnt seem realistic he says when one considers that a voluntary eyeblink takes 275 milliseconds he says that there is some evidence that a users emotional state affects typing rhythms but just as people can recognize a familiar song even if it is mangled so too he hypothesizes could software recognize ones distinct core rhythm which would be perceptible even through noise of emotion fatigue or intoxication courtesy nyt news service