A Novel Multifactor Authentication System Ensuring Usability and Security

Abstract

User authentication is one of the most important part of information security. Computer security most commonly depends on passwords to authenticate human users. Password authentication systems will be either been usable but not secure, or secure but not usable. While there are different types of authentication systems available alphanumeric password is the most commonly used authentication mechanism. But this method has significant drawbacks. An alternative solution to the text based authentication is Graphical User Authentication based on the fact that humans tends to remember images better than text. Graphical password authentication systems provide passwords which are easy to be created and remembered by the user. However, the main issues of simple graphical password techniques are shoulder surfing attack and image gallery attack. Studies reveals that most of the graphical passwords are either secure but not usable or usable but not secure. In this paper, a new technique that uses cued click point graphical password method along with the one-time session key is proposed. The goal is to propose a new authentication mechanism using graphical password to achieve higher security and better usability levels. The result of the system testing is evaluated and it reveals that the proposed system ensures security and usability to a great extent.