Using machine learning and statistical techniques to inform authentication

[Chas Emerick]

After tweeting an interesting overview of this topic yesterday:

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/12/14/authentication-is-machine-learning/

…Ryan McGowan (@Ryan_VM) replied with a link to Cadence, a Clojure project of his that "Uses pattern recognition algorithms on Cadence.js data for the purpose of recognizing users and authenticating them."

https://github.com/RyanMcG/Cadence

The project has a demo site here:

https://cadence.herokuapp.com

You'll currently need to set up an account to demo the training and evaluation of typing cadence as a means of authentication, but it's worth it IMO.

Based on a quick tour around the codebase, it looks like Cadence uses support vector machines (via clj-ml via Weka) to drive the training and later classification.

Cool stuff!

- Chas

[Ryan McGowan]

If anyone has any suggestions, ideas, questions or complaints I'd love to hear them. I am very open to collaboration on this project. Originally I wrote this for a school project so there is an accompanying essay (not very academic but perhaps a little helpful).

Thanks,

Ryan

[Alexander Hudek]

Very cool! 

Aside: Is there a problem using EPL and GPL (weka) software together like this?

On Wednesday, December 19, 2012 11:17:44 AM UTC-5, Chas Emerick wrote:

[Ryan McGowan]

Thanks! After reading up on the various licensees involved (EPL, MIT, GPLv3) and talking to a few individuals who are better advised than I the consensus seems to be it is unclear. MIT (clj-ml) seems to allow sublicensing (e.g. EPL on my library). The question remains about clj-ml and mine directly and indirectly using Weka. Since I am not distributing either I would like to think it is not an issue.  However, it is obviously a gray area.

Using GPL software on a platform that is EPL with a wrapper that is MIT is confusing (at least to me). Does anyone else have any input?

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[Alexander Hudek]

Sadly, I don't know the nuances either. Generally I just avoid the GPL whenever possible. If you are planning on maintaining this, then you might consider swapping weka for libsvm, assuming you only need svm. There is a clojure wrapper for it too: https://github.com/r0man/svm-clj (I haven't tried it).

[Ryan McGowan]

I came across this mailing list thread while trying to decide if a license switch is a good idea.  It seems that I need only worry about licensing for code I distribute (e.g. if I compiled an uberjar and distributed it I'd be in trouble).

Although timeliness is not a major concern, my intention is to continue building on this project.  svm-clj seems like a fine, thin wrapper for libsvm but I see no reason to give up weka since it has a greater variety of algorithms I may want later down the road.