Computer security based on mouse device speed setting authentication

#The present disclosure relates to computer security and more particularly to controlling access to protected information based on authentication of computer terminals.

#Some content owners desire to restrict some content, such as documents containing confidential information or copyrighted works, to being accessible to only authorized computer terminals. The authorized computer terminals may be allowed access because they are determined to be more secure by design and/or trusted because of a known relationship to authorized users. For example, an authorized terminal may be provided by an employer or may be provided by a user who has registered the terminal for use in accessing the content. Such content owners would need a way to allow the content to be accessible only from computer terminals having a confirmed identity. However, fraudsters have developed sophisticated techniques to obtain credentials of users who are authorized to access content. Some of these fraudsters have moreover developed sophisticated techniques to cause computer terminals operated by the fraudsters to impersonate other computer terminals.

#Electronic fingerprinting can be used to collect information about a computer terminal for the purpose of uniquely identifying it. A browser cookie can be stored on a computer terminal to contain information that forms an electronic fingerprint for the computer terminal, however cookies can be prone to tampering and can be discarded at any time by users or blocked by user preferences. An inventory of software versions and types residing on a computer terminal can also be used to form an electronic fingerprint, however software can be frequently updated and deleted by users. There is a need for electronic fingerprinting techniques for computer terminals that can be accurately repeated and beyond user manipulation.

#Aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated by way of example and are not limited by the accompanying drawings. In the drawings:

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of operations by an operating system to transform mouse movement data into mouse speed data and further operations by an authentication application to generate a computer terminal identifier based on a speed scaling gain used by the operating system during the transformation, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a system for authenticating computer terminals using computer terminal identifiers that are generated based on speed scaling gains used during transformation of mouse movement data into mouse speed data, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;

#Various embodiments will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings. Other embodiments may take many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout.

#Modern operating systems enable a user to customize or configure the speed at which a displayed mouse pointer is moved on a display device relative to the speed at which a mouse device is moved by the user. Various embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to generating a unique identifier for a computer terminal which is based on determining a speed scaling gain that is used by an operation system (OS) to transform mouse movement data, which is received from a mouse device via a device interface circuit, into mouse speed data that controls positioning of a mouse pointer relative to pixel locations on a display device. The speed scaling gain may be set by a user through a mouse speed settings interface where, for example, a user can move a speed setting along a fuzzy scale between a slowest setting and a fastest setting. As will be explained in further detail below, the speed setting gain may include further gain multipliers that are based on, for example, an acceleration gain and/or a filter gain that is used by the OS during the transformation of the mouse movement data into the mouse speed data. The acceleration gain may be defined by a user to cause the transformation to use a measurement of acceleration of the mouse device to control the change in mouse device speed and associated effect on future transformations to generate the mouse speed data. These and more detailed embodiments are explained below for generating computer terminal identifier that can be used to identify computer terminals.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of operations by an OS executed by a processor circuit of a computer terminal which operates to transform mouse movement data from a mouse device 50 into mouse speed data. In accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure, an authentication application operates to generate a computer terminal identifier based on a speed scaling gain used by the OS during the transformation.