Secret-Key Agreement by Asynchronous EEG over Authenticated Public Channels

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new system for a sequential secret key agreement based on 6 performance metrics derived from asynchronously recorded EEG signals using an EMOTIV EPOC+ wireless EEG headset. Based on an extensive experiment in which 76 participants were engaged in one chosen mental task, the system was optimized and rigorously evaluated. The system was shown to reach a key agreement rate of 100%, a key extraction rate of 9%, with a leakage rate of 0.0003, and a mean block entropy per key bit of 0.9994. All generated keys passed the NIST randomness test. The system performance was almost independent of the EEG signals available to the eavesdropper who had full access to the public channel.