Securing user credentials in web browser: Review and suggestion

Abstract

Web browsers that run on a computer often keep sensitive information such as user credentials and saving account numbers. With modern technology, all Web applications including web browsers apply password logins as a fundamental authentication to prove a user's identity. Passwords act as the first line of defense against attacker exploitation. However, some web browsers tend to save user passwords in databases as plaintext. This issue enables attackers to readily obtain user credentials and use the acquired passwords to break in high security web pages. This paper proposes a method that uses password hashing to secure user credentials whenever they log onto a web browser. In particular, the purpose of this method is to secure user credentials against identity theft. This method protects user credentials using passphrase password hashing using a concatenation of three elements, password, user defined passphrase, and webpage domain name. A respective string concatenation is hashed and sent to the web browser server for storage. The proposed method is easy to be developed and deployed in the web browser.