Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2025
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Engineering
Department
Computer Science and Engineering
First Advisor
Ming Li
Abstract
The proliferation of “smart” devices have contributed to the emergence of many applications leveraging on-board sensors such as microphones, IMU sensors (e.g., accelerometers, gyroscopes), and GPS for improving everyday life of humans within the realm of Internet of Things (IoT). However, we observe that the tremendous potential of IoT devices is limited by their exclusive utilization for a designated function. Furthermore, their security is consistently overlooked or worse neglected in favor of utility.
In this dissertation, we study the sensing mechanisms of IoT devices to address security challenges and develop novel applications leveraging a cross-contextual approach. Our contributions are three-fold. First, we develop a situation-aware “mini-sonar” system to assist bicyclists to avoid right-hook crashes using a smartphone. Second, we address the security problems of unattended terminals in open-shared workspaces. Specifically, we use a wearable to harness human-induced electric potential and develop a two-factor authentication scheme leveraging what the user is doing and which terminal the user is working on. Third, we aim to identify malicious USB devices by instigating and observing their response using electromagnetic emanations.
Keywords
Internet of Things, Acoustic ranging, Continuous authentication, Malicious device detection, Sensing
Disciplines
Computer Engineering | Other Computer Engineering
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Murali, Srinivasan, "WHEN SENSING MEETS IoT: FROM USER SAFETY TO USER SECURITY" (2025). Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations. 408.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/cse_dissertations/408