Journal of Cyber Security and Risk Auditing

Journal of Cyber Security and Risk Auditing

ISSN: 3079-5354 (Online)

Publishing model:

: Open access
open accessOpen Access

Article

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Student Identity Fraud Detection in Online Exams Using Keystroke Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Classical Machine Learning and Deep Learning Models

by 

Khadija Alhumaid Orcid link

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Published: 2026/31/03

Abstract

The process of conducting online examinations has created a new security threat which allows students to use their authentic identity verification systems to impersonate others for assessment completion. The paper presents an identity verification system which uses keystroke dynamics as its core mechanism. The approach creates a biometric typing signature by analyzing password typing through latency and hold-time features. A benchmark study is conducted using the CMU Keystroke Dynamics dataset (DSL-StrongPasswordData). The researchers trained multiple classical Machine Learning (ML) models and Deep Learning (DL) architectures to identify multiple student groups while measuring their performance with Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1-score, and ROC curves. The classical ML methods achieved better results than DL methods when tested on the tabular behavioral biometric dataset. The Random Forest model achieves the best performance with Accuracy = 94.07%, Precision = 94.22%, Recall = 94.07%, and F1 = 94.03%. The results demonstrate that recurrent architectures outperformed convolutional architectures because BiGRU achieved an accuracy of 88.14%. Advanced visualization techniques enable users to see how identity similarity patterns and behavioral drift and fraud risk separation exist in the data. The findings support the deployment of keystroke-based authentication as a low-cost additional security layer for academic integrity in remote proctored examinations.

Keywords

Academic integritybiometricsdeep learningkeystroke dynamicsmachine learningonline examsand student identity fraud.

Student Identity Fraud Detection in Online Exams Using Keystroke Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Classical Machine Learning and Deep Learning Models is licensed under CC BY 4.0CCBY

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