Graphical authentication based on anti-shoulder surfing mechanism

Abstract

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.