Date of Award
8-2014
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Legacy Department
Industrial Engineering
Committee Chair/Advisor
Joel S. Greenstein
Committee Member
Mary E. Kurz
Committee Member
Richard Pak
Committee Member
Patrick J. Rosopa
Abstract
The need for both usable and secure authentication is more pronounced than ever before. Security researchers and professionals will need to have a deep understanding of human factors to address these issues. Due to their ubiquity, recoverability, and low barrier of entry, passwords remain the most common means of digital authentication. However, fundamental human nature dictates that it is exceedingly difficult for people to generate secure passwords on their own. System-generated random passwords can be secure but are often unusable, which is why most passwords are still created by humans. We developed a simple system for automatically generating mnemonic phrases and supporting mnemonic images for randomly generated passwords. We found that study participants remembered their passwords significantly better using our system than with existing systems. To combat shoulder surfing - looking at a user's screen or keyboard as he or she enters sensitive input such as passwords - we developed an input masking technique that was demonstrated to minimize the threat of shoulder surfing attacks while improving the usability of password entry over existing methods. We extended this previous work to support longer passphrases with increased security and evaluated the effectiveness of our new system against traditional passphrases. We found that our system exhibited greater memorability, increased usability and overall rankings, and maintained or improved upon the security of the traditional passphrase systems. Adopting our passphrase system will lead to more usable and secure digital authentication.
Recommended Citation
Juang, Kevin, "Integrating Visual Mnemonics and Input Feedback with Passphrases to Improve the Usability and Security of Digital Authentication" (2014). All Dissertations. 1283.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/1283