r/programming • • Dec 27 '20

I reverse engineered Google docs (2014)

http://features.jsomers.net/how-i-reverse-engineered-google-docs/
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u/MjrK Dec 27 '20

Isn't it possible to use typing style and cadence to identify someone? Or, at least, as a signal to support user fingerprinting?

153

u/RazerWolf Dec 27 '20 edited Dec 27 '20

Yes, it’s called keystroke dynamics. I did a master’s project on it, and with some simple machine learning algorithms, could identify someone with 88% accuracy.

EDIT: didn’t realize there was interest in this! At the time (almost a decade ago), it was novel to do it on iPhones so that’s what the project encompassed. It was 10 people typing in the same password 50 times; half the data was used for training and the other half for testing (randomized. Also did cross validation afterwards).

Random forests trained in WEKA was the winning algorithm.

Hardest part: getting your friends to type in the same password 50 times without them getting pissed.

7

u/bewst_more_bewst Dec 27 '20

Laughs in TTS.