Synthetic Development of a Class Attendance Monitoring System using Biometric-Enabled TOTP

Manual and conventional electronic attendance systems in African universities suffer from major drawbacks such as vulnerability to proxy attendance e.g., card swapping and Quick Response (QR) code sharing and heavy dependence on unreliable power and internet connectivity. The consequences of these drawbacks necessitated a system that can accurately track attendance in a classroom setting without relying on electricity or internet connectivity. This study designed, implemented, and evaluated an air-gapped attendance tracking system. The device computes a six-digit Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP) on authentication success using the algorithm defined in RFC 6238 and a 128-bit secret key. Students manually enter the codes into the web portal developed using the Django framework and backed by PostgreSQL. The server verifies the code independently using the same algorithm and local secret key. The performance analysis carried out on 500 genuine attempts and 500 impostor attempts showed a false acceptance rate of 0%, and a true acceptance rate of 100%. The average time taken for authentications was 7.8 seconds, while the mean latency of server verification was 534 milliseconds. The developed system is completely offline in the classroom setting, does not permit proxy attendance and guarantees tamper-proof logging.