A Survey of Android Mobile Phone Authentication Schemes

Abstract

The Android operating system is the most popular mobile operating system resulting in a great number of applications being developed for the platform. This makes them vulnerable to security threats such as social engineering, shoulder surfing and Malware. Therefore, Android devices require a secure authentication scheme in order to control access to the device. This paper briefly discusses the mobile security threats, the authentication protocols and Android Security. Then the paper presents an analysis of some of the authentication schemes that are used in mobile devices and some of the threats and technical issues faced. Authentication schemes discussed include password/pin, pattern based authentication, fingerprint recognition, facial recognition, vocal recognition and iris based authentication. In discussing the various authentication methods, it was observed that while biometric based authentication schemes offered the greatest level of security, there was always a trade-off between computational complexity and ease of use/implementation/cost that ensured that more traditional authentication schemes, while not as secure as biometric schemes, are still widely used in mobile devices.