Fast location prediction algorithm utilized in enhancing One Time Password authentication

Abstract

With the rise of mobile phones and smart phones as a livelihood necessity in recent years, a security engineer's responsibility is to utilize this feature to further secure the existing infrastructure. Mobile phones can attach a geolocation to the phone owner. This geolocation can be located precisely through GPS or less precisely using network triangulation. Smart phones nowadays usually have GPS capabilities but not all phones possess this feature. GPS is precise but consumes more battery life. Triangulation uses nearby cell towers to provide the geolocation and functions at its peak in urban areas with the minimum of three cell towers. This geolocation information can be used to authenticate the clients seamlessly or to complement One Time Passwords (OTP). Volatile passwords have become popular in the past years as well. This is due to their secure nature of not maintaining any stored passwords. OTP complemented with the geolocation information acquired earlier can further improve the security of any mobile client. In this paper a prediction algorithm is evaluated and then a more accurate and faster algorithm is introduced and evaluated.