Dr Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar


Research Fellow in Adaptive Online Safety and Privacy
PhD

Publications

Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar, Nishanth Ramakrishna Sastry Innovation Exchange challenge: Communications with Minimum Infrastructure

The innovation challenge seeks to design and develop a communications system that can operate anywhere globally with limited reliance on local infrastructure while ensuring support for discrete messaging. We propose building a satellite-based secure communication system that supports all modern mobile services, such as SMS and video calls with support for discreet communications using 5G 3GPP technology. To develop this novel communication solution, the project creatively builds on three distinct technologies: satellite-based transport/backhaul network, private 5G, and privacy protocols. It targets solutions to technology challenges in addition to those described in the challenge.

Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar, Nishanth Ramakrishna Sastry, Ehsan Toreini Secret generation by shaking devices

We proposed a novel method to generate a secret between two people using a smartphone gyroscope assisted by the Fast Fourier Transform~(FFT) without communicating between two smartphones for a secret agreement. The secret generation process requires natural smartphone movements while performing day-to-day activities. Our evaluation by implementing it on Android smartphones shows a success rate above 90% with entropy above 6/8 bits. The code implements the secret generation method and its evaluation in Python.

Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar, Nishanth Ramakrishna Sastry, Ehsan Toreini Android App for secret generation by shaking smartphones

The code implements the Android App to generate a secret using smartphone gyroscope data. It uses the publically available FFT library and is written in Android Java.

Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar, Nishanth Ramakrishna Sastry, Ehsan Toreini (2024)Talk : FFT-assisted Secret Generation via Gyroscope Measurements on Smartphones
Vinod Sarjerao Khandkar, Nishanth Ramakrishna Sastry, Ehsan Toreini Shake it to the rescue: Gyroscope-based secret generation method to prevent domestic abuse

Technology-facilitated Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is especially pernicious because it is common for one person (assumed to be an abusive partner) to be responsible for setting up the household's technical infrastructure, which can be used to snoop over the victim. In this paper, we proposed a novel method to generate a secret between the victim and an external supportive agent using a smartphone gyroscope assisted by the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) without any communication between two smartphones for secret agreement. The secret generation process requires natural smart-phone movements while performing day-today activities. Our evaluation by implementing it on Android smartphones shows a success rate between 90 − −99%. We proved the resilience of the generated secret under spoofing and brute-force attacks. Thus, the method allows IPV victims to generate a secret to encrypt their communication with an external supporting agent over conventional communication services in the presence of a powerful IPV adversary.