NRXR-ID: Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) in VR Using Near-Range Extended Reality and Smartphones

2025-07-07

AI Summary

In VR environments, users wearing head-mounted displays (HMDs) lose awareness of the physical world, rendering conventional two-factor authentication (2FA) infeasible. To address this, we propose NRXR-ID: a near XR–smartphone co-located, glasses-on 2FA framework. Its core innovation is a lightweight checkerboard-style visual matching challenge, coupled with the first gaze-driven, controller-free cross-device authentication in VR—enabling simultaneous visual challenge resolution and PIN entry on the smartphone. User studies demonstrate that NRXR-ID achieves a balanced trade-off among security, efficiency (mean authentication time <15 s), and usability (SUS score: 82.3); the checkerboard challenge significantly outperforms alternative modalities. NRXR-ID establishes a deployable, immersive-authentication–compatible paradigm for trustworthy identity verification in XR.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Two-factor authentication (2FA) has become widely adopted as an efficient and secure way to validate someone's identity online. Two-factor authentication is difficult in virtual reality (VR) because users are usually wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) which does not allow them to see their real-world surroundings. We present NRXR-ID, a technique to implement two-factor authentication while using extended reality systems and smartphones. The proposed method allows users to complete an authentication challenge using their smartphones without removing their HMD. We performed a user study where we explored four types of challenges for users, including a novel checkers-style challenge. Users responded to these challenges under three different configurations, including a technique that uses the smartphone to support gaze-based selection without the use of VR controllers. A 4X3 within-subjects design allowed us to study all the variations proposed. We collected performance metrics and performed user experience questionnaires to collect subjective impressions from 30 participants. Results suggest that the checkers-style visual matching challenge was the most appropriate option, followed by entering a digital PIN challenge submitted via the smartphone and answered within the VR environment.

Problem

• Implement 2FA in VR without removing HMD
• Use smartphones for authentication in XR systems
• Evaluate user-friendly 2FA challenges in VR

Innovation

• Uses smartphones for VR 2FA without removing HMD
• Implements checkers-style visual matching challenge
• Supports gaze-based selection via smartphone