Biometric on and offline signature solution wins TypingDNA hackathon

A double-gold has been awarded to an app for on and offline digital signatures built with typing biometrics from TypingDNA in its recent hackathon, according to a company blog post written in roughly the form of an epic poem.

Over the course of 6 weeks, 600 hackers contributed 28 submissions, with 7 selected as finalists by judges and voting. Among them, social media identity confirmation service Among Us, driving and texting detector ChatAppNoDrive, and online education tool ProctoPro, and eHealth App, which tracks the inflammatory disease dermatomyositis.

Third prize went to cryptocurrency wallet Biowallet, which secures bitcoin transfers against viruses and malware, according to the announcement. Dissociative Journal took second prize, applying the behavioral biometric capabilities of TypingDNA’s engine to help uncover dissociative identity disorders, which the developers say may affect be undiagnosed in seven percent of all people.

The winner, typdf, identifies the user by typing pattern to sign documents. Developer Vivek Aithal noted the ridiculous use of digital drawing tools to ‘write’ a signature on a PDF document, and set out to develop something that applies the idea behind services like DocuSign to reproducible and verifiable identity.

By storing the signature in both the metadata of the document, and a QR code, verification can be performed for PDFs, images and scans. The solution preserves user privacy, and prevents fraud from entering transactions as they move between on and offline environments. Typdf took both first prize overall and the TypingDNA Popularity award.

The quality of the entries moved TypingDNA to make some changes to the awards portion of the hackathon, according to Michelle Sandford, a judge and developer community advocate.

“In the end, TypingDNA decided to give out a few more prizes, just to pacify the judges – but even so, there were so many entrants that worked really hard to produce their solutions and we wished we could have told them all how impressed we were with the work they had done,” Sandford says.

Article Topics

behavioral biometrics  |  biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  research and development  |  TypingDNA