# PIANO: Proximity-based User Authentication on Voice-Powered Internet-of-Things Devices

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03118 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03118/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [An Empirical Study of IoT Security Aspects at Sentence-Level in Developer Textual Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03079/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Voice is envisioned to be a popular way for humans to interact with Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. We propose a proximity-based user authentication method (called PIANO) for access control on such voice-powered IoT devices. PIANO leverages the built-in speaker, microphone, and Bluetooth that voice-powered IoT devices often already have. Specifically, we assume that a user carries a personal voice-powered device (e.g., smartphone, smartwatch, or smartglass), which serves as the user's identity. When another voice-powered IoT device of the user requires authentication, PIANO estimates the distance between the two devices by playing and detecting certain acoustic signals; PIANO grants access if the estimated distance is no larger than a user-selected threshold. We implemented a proof-of-concept prototype of PIANO. Through theoretical and empirical evaluations, we find that PIANO is secure, reliable, personalizable, and efficient.