Utilization of the Internet in our everyday lives has made us vulnerable in
terms of privacy and security of our data and systems. Therefore, there is a
pressing need to protect our data and systems by improving authentication
mechanisms, which are expected to be low cost, unobtrusive, and ideally
ubiquitous in nature. Behavioral biometric modalities such as mouse dynamics
(mouse behaviors on a graphical user interface (GUI)) and widget interactions
(another modality closely related to mouse dynamics that also considers the
target (widget) of a GUI interaction, such as links, buttons, and combo-boxes)
can bolster the security of existing authentication systems because of their
ability to distinguish an individual based on their unique features. As a
result, it can be difficult for an imposter to impersonate these behavioral
biometrics, making them suitable for authentication. In this paper, we survey
the literature on mouse dynamics and widget interactions dated from 1897 to
2023. We begin our survey with an account of the psychological perspectives on
behavioral biometrics. We then analyze the literature along the following
dimensions: tasks and experimental settings for data collection, taxonomy of
raw attributes, feature extractions and mathematical definitions, publicly
available datasets, algorithms (statistical, machine learning, and deep
learning), data fusion, performance, and limitations. Lastly, we end the paper
with presenting challenges and promising research opportunities.