Continuous authentication systems leveraging free-text keyboard dynamics
offer a promising additional layer of security in a multifactor authentication
setup that can be used in a transparent way with no impact on user experience.
This study investigates the efficacy of behavioral biometrics by employing an
Agent-Based Model (ABM) to simulate diverse typing profiles across mechanical
and membrane keyboards. Specifically, we generated synthetic keystroke data
from five unique agents, capturing features related to dwell time, flight time,
and error rates within sliding 5-second windows updated every second. Two
machine learning approaches, One-Class Support Vector Machine (OC-SVM) and
Random Forest (RF), were evaluated for user verification. Results revealed a
stark contrast in performance: while One-Class SVM failed to differentiate
individual users within each group, Random Forest achieved robust
intra-keyboard user recognition (Accuracy > 0.7) but struggled to generalize
across keyboards for the same user, highlighting the significant impact of
keyboard hardware on typing behavior. These findings suggest that: (1)
keyboard-specific user profiles may be necessary for reliable authentication,
and (2) ensemble methods like RF outperform One-Class SVM in capturing
fine-grained user-specific patterns.