Smart Device Authentication Based on Online Handwritten Script Identification and Word Recognition in Indic Scripts Using Zone-Wise Features

Secure authentication is a vital component for device security. The most basic form of authentication is by using passwords. With the evolution of smart devices, selecting stronger and unbreakable passwords have become a challenging task. Such passwords if written in native languages tend to offer improved security since attackers having no knowledge of such scripts finding it hard to crack. This article proposes two zone-wise feature extraction approaches - zone-wise structural and directional (ZSD) and zone-wise slopes of dominant points (ZSDP), to recognize online handwritten script and word in four major Indic scripts - Devanagari, Bengali, Telugu and Tamil. These features have been used separately and in combination in HMM-based platform for recognition purpose. The dimension reduction of the ZSD-ZSDP combination with factor analysis has shown the best performance in all the four scripts. This work can be utilized for setting up the authentication schemes with the Indic scripts' passwords thus rendering it difficult to crack by hackers having no knowledge of such scripts.