Human identification through image evaluation using secret predicates

Abstract

The task of developing protocols for humans to securely authenticate themselves to a remote server has been an interesting topic in cryptography as a replacement for the traditional, less secure, password based systems. The protocols proposed in literature are based on some underlying difficult mathematical problem, which are tuned so as to make them easily computable by humans. As a result these protocols are easily broken when desired to be efficiently executable. We present a Human Identification Protocol based on the ability of humans to efficiently process an image given a secret predicate. It is a challenge-response protocol in which a subset of images presented satisfies a secret predicate shared by the challenger and the user. We conjecture that it is hard to guess this secret predicate for adversaries, both humans and programs. It can be efficiently executed by humans with the knowledge of the secret which in turn is easily memorable and replaceable. We prove the security of the protocol separately for human adversaries and programs based on two separate assumptions and justify these assumptions with the help of an example implementation.