US 8,949,958 B1Granted

Authentication using media fingerprinting

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorScott Dixon

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Disclosed are various embodiments for determining if a requesting client is within a predetermined distance of a location of a trusted client. In one embodiment, a trusted signal having a plurality of trusted signal metrics may be established by the trusted client as being associated with a specified location. The trusted signal may then be rendered to the requesting client to be recorded as a contested signal. In one embodiment, an authentication service may then determine if the contested signal is of an adequate signal quality according a predetermined quality threshold. Assuming the contested signal is of an adequate quality, the authentication service then determines that the requesting client is within a common acoustic environment as the trusted client if the contested signal corresponds to the trusted signal by comparing a plurality of contested signal metrics with a plurality of trusted signal metrics.

Claims24

Dependent claims

A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a program executable in a computing device, wherein, when executed, the program causes the computing device to at least:

establish a trusted signal as being rendered at a location by a speaker in communication with a trusted computing device, wherein the trusted signal is rendered at a level corresponding to a desired reception distance, wherein the trusted signal is at least one of an audio file, a recorded passphrase, or an ambient noise recording;
determine a plurality of trusted signal metrics that describe the trusted signal;
receive a contested signal from a contested computing device, the contested signal comprising a recording of the trusted signal being rendered at the location, wherein the contested computing device obtains the recording using a microphone in communication with the contested computing device;
determine whether the contested signal satisfies a predetermined quality threshold;
and
wherein responsive to a determination that the contested signal satisfies the predetermined quality threshold, the program further causes the computing device to:
normalize the contested signal according to the trusted signal and a plurality of device characteristics of the contested computing device to generate a normalized version of the contested signal;
determine a plurality of contested signal metrics associated with the contested signal that describe the normalized version of the contested signal;
and
determine that the contested computing device and the trusted computing device are located in a shared acoustic environment when the contested signal corresponds to the trusted signal, wherein the contested signal corresponds to the trusted signal if at least a predetermined number of the contested signal metrics correspond to respective ones of the trusted signal metrics with at least a predetermined degree of accuracy.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 13/217,324Filed 25 Aug 2011
Granted: 3 Feb 2015
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification10 codes

G06F 21/31
Authentication, i.e. establishing the identity or authorisation of security principals: user authentication
G06F 21/10
Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity: protecting distributed…
H04L 63/0492
Wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload: by using a location-limited connection, e.g. near-field…
H04L 63/08
Network architectures or network communication protocols for network security: for authentication of entities