Continuous Authentication Using Mouse Clickstream Data Analysis

Biometrics is used to authenticate an individual based on physiological or behavioral traits. Mouse dynamics is an example of a behavioral biometric that can be used to perform continuous authentication as protection against security breaches. Recent research on mouse dynamics has shown promising results in identifying users; however, it has not yet reached an acceptable level of accuracy. In this paper, an empirical evaluation of different classification techniques is conducted on a mouse dynamics dataset, the Balabit Mouse Challenge dataset. User identification is carried out using three mouse actions: mouse move, point and click, and drag and drop. Verification and authentication methods are conducted using three machine-learning classifiers: the Decision Tree classifier, the K-Nearest Neighbors classifier, and the Random Forest classifier. The results show that the three classifiers can distinguish between a genuine user and an impostor with a relatively high degree of accuracy. In the verification mode, all the classifiers achieve a perfect accuracy of 100%. In authentication mode, all three classifiers achieved the highest accuracy (ACC) and Area Under Curve (AUC) from scenario B using the point and click action data: (Decision Tree ACC:87.6%, AUC:90.3%), (K-Nearest Neighbors ACC:99.3%, AUC:99.9%), and (Random Forest ACC:89.9%, AUC:92.5%).