Seminar Report

ABSTRACT

The most common computer authentication method is to use alphanumerical

usernames and passwords. This method has been shown to have significant drawbacks.
For example, users tend to pick passwords that can be easily guessed. On the other hand,
if a password is hard to guess, then it is often hard to remember.

To address this problem, some researchers have developed authentication

methods that use pictures as passwords. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive
survey of the existing graphical password techniques. We classify these techniques into
two categories: recognition-based and recall-based approaches. We discuss the strengths
and limitations of each method and point out the future research directions in this area.

We also try to answer two important questions: “Are graphical passwords as

secure as text-based passwords?”; “What are the major design and implementation issues
for graphical passwords”. In this paper, we are conducting a comprehensive survey of
existing graphical image password authentication techniques. Also we are here proposing
a new technique for graphical authentication.

1
Seminar Report

INTRODUCTION

Human factors are often considered the weakest link in a computer security
system. Point out that there are three major areas where human-computer interaction is
important: authentication, security operations, and developing secure systems. Here we
focus on the authentication problem. On the other hand, passwords that are hard to guess
or break are often hard to remember. Studies showed that since user can only remember a
limited number of passwords, they tend to write them down or will use the same
passwords for different accounts. To address the problems with traditional username-
password authentication, alternative authentication methods, such as biometrics, have
been used. In this paper, however, we will focus on another alternative: using pictures as
passwords.

Graphical password schemes have been proposed as a possible alternative to text-

based schemes, motivated partially by the fact that humans can remember pictures better
than text; psychological studies supports such assumption. Pictures are generally easier to
be remembered or recognized than text. In addition, if the number of possible pictures is
sufficiently large, the possible password space of a graphical password scheme may
exceed that of text-based schemes and thus presumably offer better resistance to
dictionary attacks. Because of these advantages, there is a growing interest in Graphical
password. In addition to workstation and web log-in applications, graphical passwords
have also been applied to ATM machines and mobile devices.

In this paper, we conduct comprehensive survey of the existing graphical

password techniques. We will discuss the strengths and limitations of each method and
also point out future research directions in this area. In this paper, we want to answer the
following questions:

 Are graphical passwords as secure as text passwords?

 What are the major design and implementation issues for graphical passwords?

2
Seminar Report

OVERVIEW OF THE AUTHENTICATION METHODS

Current authentication methods can be divided into
Three main areas:
 Token based authentication
 Biometric based authentication
 Knowledge based authentication

Token based techniques, such as key cards, bank cards and smart cards are
widely used. Many token-based authentication systems also use knowledge based
techniques to enhance security. For example, ATM cards are generally used together with
a PIN number.

Biometric based authentication techniques, such as fingerprints, iris scan, or facial

recognition, are not yet widely adopted. The major drawback of this approach is that such
systems can be expensive, and the identification process can be slow and often unreliable.
However, this type of technique provides the highest level of security.

Knowledge based techniques are the most widely used authentication techniques
and include both text-based and picture-based passwords. The picture-based techniques
can be further divided into two categories: recognition-based and recall-based graphical
techniques. Using recognition-based techniques, a user is presented with a set of images
and the user passes the authentication by recognizing and identifying the images he or she
selected during the registration stage. Using recall-based techniques, a user is asked to
reproduce something that he or she created or selected earlier during the registration
stage.

3
Seminar Report

RECOGNITION BASED TECHNIQUES

Dhamija and Perrig proposed a graphical authentication scheme based on the
HashVisualization technique. In their system, the user is asked to select a certain number
of images from a set of random pictures generated by a program. Later, the user will be
required to identify the pre selected images in order to be authenticated. The results
showed that 90% of all participants succeeded in the authentication using this technique,
while only 70% succeeded using text-based passwords and PINS. The average log-in
time, however, is longer than the traditional approach. A weakness of this system is that
the server needs to store the seeds of the portfolio images of each user in plain text. Also,
the process of selecting a set of pictures from the picture database can be tedious and time
consuming for the user.

Random images used by Dhamija and Perrig

Sobrado and Birget developed a graphical password technique that deals with the
shoulder-surfing problem. In the first scheme, the system will display a number of pass-
objects (pre-selected by user) among many other objects. To be authenticated, a user
needs to recognize pass-objects and click inside the convex hull formed by all the pass-
objects.In order to make the password hard to guess, Sobrado and Birget suggested using
1000 objects, which makes the display very crowded and the objects almost
indistinguishable, but using fewer objects may lead to a smaller password space, since the
resulting convex hull can be large. In their second algorithm, a user moves a frame (and
the objects within it) until the pass object on the frame lines up with the other two pass-
objects. The authors also suggest repeating the process a few more times to minimize the

4
Seminar Report

likelihood of logging in by randomly clicking or rotating. The main drawback of these

algorithms is that the log in process can be slow.

A shoulder-surfing resistant graphical password scheme

Man, et al. proposed another shoulder-surfing resistant algorithm. In this

algorithm, a user selects a number of pictures as pass-objects. Each pass-object has
several variants and each variant is assigned a unique code. During authentication, the
user is challenged with several scenes. Each scene contains several pass-objects (each in
the form of a randomly chosen variant) and many decoy-objects. The user has to type in a
string with the unique codes corresponding to the pass-object variants present in the
scene as well as a code indicating the relative location of the pass-objects in reference to
a pair of eyes. The argument is that it is very hard to crack this kind of password even if
the whole authentication process is recorded on video because where is no mouse click to
give away the pass-object information. However, this method still requires users to
memorize the alphanumeric code for each pass-object variant. Hong, et al. later extended
this approach to allow the user to assign their own codes to pass-object variants.
However, this method still forces the user to memorize many text strings and therefore
suffer from the many drawbacks of text-based passwords.

An example of Pass faces

5
Seminar Report

Jansen et al proposed a graphical password mechanism for mobile device. During

the enrollment stage, a user selects a theme (e.g. sea, cat, etc.) which consists of
thumbnail photos and then registers a sequence of images as a password .During the
authentication, the user must enter the registered images in the correct sequence. One
drawback of this technique is that since the number of thumb nail images is limited to 30,
the password space is small. Each thumbnail image is assigned a numerical value, and the
sequence of selection will generate a numerical password. The result showed that the
image sequence length was generally shorter than the textural password length. To
address this problem, two pictures can be combined to compose a new alphabet element,
thus expanding the image alphabet size.

Reproduce a drawing:

A graphical password scheme proposed by Jansen, et al

6
Seminar Report

RECALL BASED

Jermyn, et al. proposed a technique, called “Draw - a - secret (DAS)”, which

allows the user to draw their unique password .A user is asked to draw a simple picture
on a 2D grid. The coordinates of the grids occupied by the picture are stored in the order
of the drawing. During authentication, the user is asked to re-draw the picture. If the
drawing touches the same grids in the same sequence, then the user is authenticated.
Jermyn, et al. Suggested that given reasonable-length passwords in a 5 X 5 grid, the full
password space of DAS is larger than that of the full text password space.

Draw-a-Secret (DAS) technique proposed by Jermyn, et al

Nali and Thorpe conducted further analysis of the “Draw-A-Secret (DAS)”

scheme. In their study, users were asked to draw a DAS password on paper in order to
determine if there are predictable characteristics in the graphical passwords that people
choose. The study did not find any predictability in the start and end points for DAS
password strokes, but found that certain symmetries (e.g. crosses and rectangles), letters,
and numbers were common. The “PassPoint” system by Wiedenbeck, et al. Extended
Blonder’s idea by eliminating the predefined boundaries and allowing arbitrary images to
be used. As a result, a user can click on any place on an image (as opposed to some pre-
defined areas) to create a password. A tolerance around each chosen pixel is calculated.
In order to be authenticated, the user must click within the tolerance of their chosen
pixels and also in the correct sequence . This technique is based on the discretization
method proposed by Birget, et al. . Because any picture can be used and because a picture

7
Seminar Report

may contain hundreds to thousands of memorable points, the possible password space is
quite large.

An image used in the Passpoint Sytem, Wiedenbeck, et al

8
Seminar Report

NEW TECHNIQUE FOR GRAPHICAL PASSWORD

AUTHENTICATION

Here we are proposing a new algorithm of authentication using graphical images.

When a user tries to register over a network we will ask him or her to select a theme or
sequence of pictures from already given image frame. The local host downloads an image
frame which contains various themes of sequence of pictures which act as passwords,
these are given by server. Since any image is made of pixels we have its gray level
concentration. In this way the image will be distorted and can’t be in original form.so it is
not easy for hacker to reproduce the original form of image.

The flow chart of the proposed technique is given below.

9
Seminar Report

BLOCK DIAGRAM FOR THE NEW TECHNIQUE

Is a graphical password as secure as text-based password?
Very little research has been done to study the difficulty of cracking graphical
passwords. Because graphical passwords are not widely used in practice, there is no
report on real cases of breaking graphical passwords. Here we briefly exam some of the
possible techniques for breaking graphical passwords and try to do a comparison with
text-based passwords.

Brute force search

The main defense against brute force search is to have a sufficiently large
password space. Text-based passwords have a password space of 94^N, where N is the
length of the password, 94 is the number of Printable characters excluding SPACE. Some
graphical password techniques have been shown to provide a password space similar to
or larger than that of text-based passwords. Recognition based graphical passwords tend
to have smaller password spaces than the recall based methods.

It is more difficult to carry out a brute force attack against graphical passwords
than text-based passwords. The attack programs need to automatically generate accurate
mouse motion to imitate human input, which is particularly difficult for recall based
graphical passwords. Overall, we believe a graphical password is less vulnerable to brute
force attacks than a text-based password.

Dictionary attacks
Since recognition based graphical passwords involve mouse input instead of
keyboard input, it will be impractical to carry out dictionary attacks against this type of
graphical passwords. For some recall based graphical passwords it is possible to use a
dictionary attack but an automated dictionary attack will be much more complex than a
text based dictionary attack. More research is needed in this area. Overall, we believe
graphical passwords are less vulnerable to dictionary attacks than text-based passwords.

10
Seminar Report

Guessing

Unfortunately, it seems that graphical passwords are often predictable, a serious

problem typically associated with text-based passwords. For example, studies on the Pass
face technique have shown that people often choose weak and predictable graphical
passwords. Nali and Thorpe’s study revealed similar predictability among the graphical
passwords created with the DAS technique. More research efforts are needed to
understand the nature of graphical passwords created by real world users.

Shoulder surfing

Like text based passwords, most of the graphical passwords are vulnerable to
shoulder surfing. At this point, only a few recognition-based techniques are designed to
resist shoulder-surfing. None of the recall-based based techniques are considered should-
surfing resistant.

11
Seminar Report

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR DESIGN AND

IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES OF GRAPHICAL
PASSWORDS?
Security
In the above section, we have briefly examined the security issues with graphical
passwords.

Usability
One of the main arguments for graphical passwords is that pictures are easier to
remember than text strings. Preliminary user studies presented in some research papers
seem to support this. However, current user studies are still very limited, involving only a
small number of users. We still do not have convincing evidence demonstrating that
graphical passwords are easier to remember than text based passwords.

A major complaint among the users of graphical passwords is that the password
registration and log-in process take too long, especially in recognition-based approaches.
For example, during the registration stage, a user has to pick images from a large set of
selections. During authentication stage, a user has to scan many images to identify a few
pass-images.

Users may find this process long and tedious. Because of this and also because
most users are not familiar with the graphical passwords, they often find graphical
passwords less convenient than text based passwords.

Reliability

The major design issue for recall-based methods is the reliability and accuracy of
user input recognition. In this type of method, the error tolerances have to be set carefully
– overly high tolerances may lead to many false positives while overly low tolerances
may lead to many false negatives. In addition, the more error tolerant the program, the
more vulnerable it is to attacks.

12
Seminar Report

Storage and communication

Graphical passwords require much more storage space than text based passwords.
Tens of thousands of pictures may have to be maintained in a centralized database.
Network transfer delay is also a concern for graphical passwords, especially for
recognition-based techniques in which a large number of pictures may need to be
displayed for each round of verification.

13
Seminar Report

CONCLUSION
The past decade has seen a growing interest in using graphical passwords as an
alternative to the traditional text-based passwords. In this paper, we have conducted a
comprehensive survey of existing graphical password techniques. The current graphical
password techniques can be classified into two categories: recognition-based and recall-
based techniques..

Although the main argument for graphical passwords is that people are better at
memorizing graphical passwords than text-based passwords, the existing user studies are
very limited and there is not yet convincing evidence to support this argument. Our
preliminary analysis suggests that it is more difficult to break graphical passwords using
the traditional attack methods such as brute force search, dictionary attack, or spyware.
However, since there is not yet wide deployment of graphical password systems, the
vulnerabilities of graphical passwords are still not fully understood.

Overall, the current graphical password techniques are still immature. Much more
research and user studies are needed for graphical password techniques to achieve higher
levels of maturity and usefulness.

14
Seminar Report

REFERENCES

[1] S. Patrick, A. C. Long, and S. Flinn, "HCI and Security Systems," presented at
CHI, Extended Abstracts (Workshops). Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. 2003.
[2] A. Adams and M. A. Sasse, "Users are not the enemy: why users compromise
computer security mechanisms and how to take remedial measures,"
Communications of the ACM, vol. 42, pp. 41-46, 1999.
[3] K. Gilhooly, "Biometrics: Getting Back to Business," in Computerworld, May 09,
2000.

15