Swipe2Pair: Secure and Fast In-Band Wireless Device Pairing

TL;DR

Swipe2Pair is a rapid, secure, and user-friendly in-band wireless device pairing scheme that uses device proximity and transmission power randomization, enabling pairing in less than a second with minimal user effort.

Contribution

This paper introduces Swipe2Pair, a novel in-band device pairing method that enhances security and usability without requiring multiple antennas or repeated user actions.

Findings

Achieves pairing in under one second

Provides high security through mutual authentication

Requires only a simple swipe gesture

Abstract

Wireless device pairing is a critical security mechanism to bootstrap the secure communication between two devices without a pre-shared secret. It has been widely used in many Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as smart-home and smart-health. Most existing device pairing mechanisms are based on out-of-band channels, e.g., extra sensors or hardware, to validate the proximity of pairing devices. However, out-of-band channels are not universal across all wireless devices, so such a scheme is limited to certain application scenarios or conditions. On the other hand, in-band channel-based device pairing seeks universal applicability by only relying on wireless interfaces. Existing in-band channel-based pairing schemes either require multiple antennas separated by a good distance on one pairing device, which is not feasible in certain scenarios, or require users to repeat multiple sweeps, which is not optimal in terms of usability. Therefore, an in-band wireless device pairing scheme providing high security while maintaining high usability (simple pairing process and minimal user intervention) is highly desired. In this work, we propose an easy-to-use mutual authentication device pairing scheme, named Swipe2Pair, based on the proximity of pairing devices and randomization of wireless transmission power. We conduct extensive security analysis and collect considerable experimental data under various settings across different environments. Experimental results show that Swipe2Pair achieves high security and usability. It only takes less than one second to complete the pairing process with a simple swipe of one device in front of the other.