On Cultural-centered Graphical Passwords

Graphical user authentication (GUA) is a common alternative to text-based user authentication, where people are required to draw graphical passwords on background images. Recent research provides evidence that gamification of the graphical password creation process influences people to make less predictable choices. Aiming to understand the underlying reasons from a visual behavior perspective, in this paper, we report a small-scale eye-tracking study that compares the visual behavior developed by people who follow a gamified approach and people who follow a non-gamified approach to make their graphical password choices. The results show that people who follow a gamified approach have higher gaze-based entropy, as they fixate on more image areas and for longer periods, and thus, they have an increased effective password space, which could lead to better and less predictable password choices.

ABSTRACTGraphical password composition is an important part of graphical user authentication which affects the strength of the chosen password. Considering that graphical authentication is associated with visual search, perception, and information retrieval, in this paper we report on an eye-tracking study (N = 109) that aimed to investigate the effects of users’ cognitive styles toward the strength of the created passwords and shed light into whether and how the visual strategy of the users during graphical password composition is associated with the passwords’ strength. For doing so, we adopted Witkin’s Field Dependence-Independence theory, which underpins individual differences in visual information and cognitive processing, as graphical password composition tasks are associated with visual search. The analysis revealed that users with different cognitive processing characteristics followed different patterns of visual behavior during password composition which affected the strength of the created passwords. The findings underpin the need of considering human-cognitive characteristics as a design factor in graphical password schemes. The paper concludes by discussing implications for improving recognition-based graphical passwords through adaptation and personalization techniques based on individual cognitive characteristics.

In this paper Image Based Authentication application is applied on folder's (folders that are confidential to user) ,since the studies till date have shown that textual passwords are more prone that they are well hacked by hackers through easily available software's or programming different code to hack the password. The textual passwords use languages that can be identified using the grammar that they use, therefore our project focuses on Graphical passwords , because as such it has been observed that human brains is better at re-collecting and recognizing images than text, the images are well captured and stored rather than text. There have been phases in creating a strong graphical password scheme from 1999, with the promise that the graphical passwords would provide improved password memorability and usability. The technique that we use here is PCCP (PERSUASIVE CUED CLICK POINTS), this is a combination of recall and recognition based techniques with the implementation of SHA1 (Secure Hash Algorithm). Here PCCP is used for user to have better strong passwords by expanding password space and SHA1 is used to ensure security to folder. Keyword: Authentication, Graphical Password, Hotspot, Passpoints, Secure Hash Algorithm,

Strong passwords are fundamental to the security of password-based user authentication systems. In recent years, much effort has been made to evaluate password strength or to generate strong passwords. Unfortunately, the usability or memorability of the strong passwords has been largely neglected. In this paper, we aim to bridge the gap between strong password generation and the usability of strong passwords. We propose to automatically generate textual password mnemonics, i.e., natural language sentences, which are intended to help users better memorize passwords. We introduce \textit{DeepMnemonic}, a deep attentive encoder-decoder framework which takes a password as input and then automatically generates a mnemonic sentence for the password. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate DeepMnemonic on the real-world data sets. The experimental results demonstrate that DeepMnemonic outperforms a well-known baseline for generating semantically meaningful mnemonic sentences. Moreover, the user study further validates that the generated mnemonic sentences by DeepMnemonic are useful in helping users memorize strong passwords.

A pattern password is an authentication system that works when a user selects images in a specific sequence displayed on a graphical user interface (GUI). For this reason, the graphical password method is called Graphical User Authentication (GUA). The most common way to authenticate a computer is by using an alphanumeric username and password. This method has been shown to have significant drawbacks. For example, users tend to choose passwords that are easy to guess. On the other hand, if a password is difficult to guess, it is often difficult to remember. To overcome these security issues, researchers have developed an authentication method that uses colours and images as passwords. In this research paper, we present a comprehensive overview of existing pattern password methods and introduce our own theory. Graphic cryptosystems have been proposed as a possible alternative to text-based schemes because people can remember colours and images better than text. Colours and Images are usually easier to remember or recognize than text. In this composition, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of existing graphical password ways. These ways fell into two orders: recognition-based and memory-based approaches. Thereafter the strengths and limitations of each approach and coming research directions in this field will be talked over in detail.

Advancement of information technology leads toward a world with process automation to perform a task more efficiently and avail the services with ease. Banking sectors are not an exception and are moving from traditional manual banking system to an electronic entity. The basic functionality of a bank, out of many, is to deposit money into user accounts and retrieve as per account holder’s necessity. However, as time is precious, eventually account holders may not expect to spend too much time in the queue for depositing or retrieving their money. That is why the need for ATM comes into the picture to make the user’s life easier. However, it comes with some questionable possibilities for false attacks as well. Thus, a proper user authentication mechanism is needed to overcome these fraudulent activities. Our proposed method gives a new dimension to this authentication which is a hybrid version of an existing authentication system for the ATM transaction by using a Graphical pattern password along with current PIN code supplied from the bank. This Graphical password is a version, which has been invented by Google’s Android pattern unlock system. In our proposed mechanism, we combine both Graphical pattern and PIN and incorporated security to enhance reliable transactions. More specifically, the secret encryption key is generated from a PIN using the PRESENT algorithm. Finally, the ciphertext is created using digit stream from the Graphical pattern and secret encryption key. This hybrid process to detect intrusion will significantly enhance security. Our primary focus is to develop a robust and flexible user authentication system to avoid common authentication problems. The proposed approach needs no additional hardware and device dependency.

Authentication is one of the most important mechanisms to ensure system accessibility by legitimate users. Various authentication tools exist based on numerous techniques. Distinguishing factors of such authentication tools are the underlying passwords that they imply. These passwords can be textual based, graphical based, hardware based or biometric based. All such password types have their pros and cons. The principle focus of this research is picture-based graphical passwords, since they are easy to remember and can overcome the limitations of using long textual passwords for stronger security. However, mostly the picture-based passwords suffer from shoulder surfing attacks and are therefore vulnerable. If this vulnerability is overcome then such graphical passwords are highly useful because of their strength and ease of use as compared to long textual passwords. The main objective of this research is to propose and develop a picture-based authentication scheme with anti shoulder surfing capability. The proposed authentication scheme consists of both password creation and usage. Both these stages are supported by specialized technical constructs that overcome the anti shoulder surfing attack even if the attacker is standing next to the legitimate user.

Purpose – The Android pattern lock screen (or graphical password) is a popular user authentication method that relies on the advantages provided by the visual representation of a password, which enhance its memorability. Graphical passwords are vulnerable to attacks (e.g. shoulder surfing); thus, the need for more complex passwords becomes apparent. This paper aims to focus on the features that constitute a usable and secure pattern and investigate the existence of heuristic and physical rules that possibly dictate the formation of a pattern. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a survey to study the users’ understanding of the security and usability of the pattern lock screen. The authors developed an Android application that collects graphical passwords, by simulating user authentication in a mobile device. This avoids any potential bias that is introduced when the survey participants are not interacting with a mobile device while forming graphical passwords (e.g. in Web or hard-copy surveys). Findings – The findings verify and enrich previous knowledge for graphical passwords, namely, that users mostly prefer usability than security. Using the survey results, the authors demonstrate how biased input impairs security by shrinking the available password space. Research limitations/implications – The sample’s demographics may affect our findings. Therefore, future work can focus on the replication of our work in a sample with different demographics. Originality/value – The authors define metrics that measure the usability of a pattern (handedness, directionality and symmetry) and investigate their impact to its formation. The authors propose a security assessment scheme using features in a pattern (e.g. the existence of knight moves or overlapping nodes) to evaluate its security strengths.

User authentication is necessary to secure the data and process on internet or mobile communications. Most commonly employed system for said purpose is Static alpha-numeric password based authentication system. But they are susceptible to various types of active and passive attacks. One of the promising alternatives is Graphical password based authentication systems which if implemented properly are secure but not as easy to understand or learn.In this paper we propose a varied version of inkblot authentication [1] graphical password system which is secure as well as usable. It generates pseudo random one time passwords using a set of inkblots unique to the user. Properties of one time passwords ensures the resistance towards replay, phishing, shoulder surfing, active and dictionary attacks. We also analyze the results from two experiments we have conducted to confirm that this system is easy to learn and password memorability is high, thus making it a promising authentication mechanism.KeywordsUsable securityAuthenticationOne-time passwordsCueingInterfaces

Graphical User Authentication (GUA) is an image-based password system that leverages the human tendency to remember visuals more effectively. This methodology enables users to effortlessly generate and recall passwords. The three important parameters for any graphical based password system are Usability, Randomness and Security. Usability deals with the system adaptability, memorability, flexibility, User satisfaction etc. On the other side randomness is about Hotspot Coverage, Click Point Clustering, Spatial Patterns, J-statistics etc. This paper is an attempt to initially develop an image-based authentication system that is usable, venerable in terms of randomness. In addition, it is necessary to build a strong security authentication process where the attackers are unable to access the system. The past research study claims the diversity between the usability and security aspect. The focus of this research study is to analyze the impact of various security attacks on the proposed system and the possible solution to avoid them.

The problems with passwords are well-known: secure passwords are difficult to remember, users have too many passwords, and users have difficulty matching their passwords to accounts. Password managers and cued graphical passwords are two password solutions that address the issues of memorability and keeping track of of passwords. We have developed Versipass, a password manager that incorporates key elements of password managers and cued graphical passwords to avoid existing problems of password memorability and associating passwords with accounts. Instead of remembering passwords, Versipass remembers image cues for graphical passwords. These cues help users to better remember their passwords and to more easily link passwords with accounts. Versipass also facilitates safe password reuse by allowing users to use the same image cue for multiple accounts.

In general, it is difficult to remember a strong password i.e. a long and random password. So, the common tendency of a user is to select a weak alphanumeric password that is easy to remember. But the password which is easy to remember is also easy to predict. In contrast, the password that is very difficult to predict or requires more computation to break is also difficult to remember. To overcome this limitation of creating secure and memorable passwords, researchers have developed graphical password scheme which takes images as passwords rather than alphanumeric characters. But graphical password schemes are vulnerable to shoulder-surfing attack where an attacker can capture a password by direct observation. In this paper a graphical password scheme, namely SG-PASS is proposed which can prevent the shoulder-surfing attack by a human observer and also spyware attack, using a challenge response method.

Current authentication strategies seek to increase security by requiring users to create more secure alphanumeric passwords, but the inverse relationship between alphanumeric password security and memorability prevents users from being able to create a password that is both secure and memorable. Graphical user authentication mechanisms have been explored as a means to maintain security while enhancing memorability of passcodes. Current approaches often use unrelated picture sets from which participants have to remember a subset, with mixed results. Proposed in this paper is an alternative approach of using a Composite Scene Authentication (CSA) mechanism to maximize memorability of graphical passcodes. In the current study, a composite image consisting of nine elements was compared to a nine character hexadecimal password. Participants were able to correctly recognize the CSA mechanism 80% of the time, but only able to recall the hexadecimal password 20% of the time.

User authentication is an essential step in information security. Textual passwords are the most traditional ways used in most user authentication systems to achieve the security of information, but textual passwords are vulnerable to many types of attacks such as: dictionary attacks, shoulder surfing, and spyware. Graphical password can overcome the shortcomings of the textual passwords, but it still vulnerable to shouldersurfing attacks, takes much space in the system and sometimes user takes a long time to enter. By using Emoji-pictures, a new technique that overcomes the drawbacks of both textual and graphical passwords was presented in this paper. The proposed technique is resistant to dictionary attacks, shoulder surfing, and spyware in addition to that it doesn't take large space in the system's database and provides a safe and enjoyable session for users during entering the password.

The major problem of user registration, mostly text base password, is well known. In the login user be inclined to select simple passwords which is frequently in mind that are straightforward for attackers to guess, difficult machine created password mostly complicated to user take in mind. User authenticate password using cued click points and Persuasive Cued Click Points graphical password scheme which includes usability and security evaluations. This paper includes the persuasion to secure user authentication & graphical password using cued click-points so that users select more random or more difficult to guess the passwords. In click-based graphical passwords, image or video frame that provide database to load the image, and then store all information into database. Mainly passwords are composed of strings which have letters as well as digits. Example is alpha-numeric type letters and digits.