We present results from an online experiment with the goal of nudging users towards stronger passwords. We explored the effect of suggesting different variations and constellations of passwords during password selection. In particular, we investigated whether the decoy effect can be applied here: When people face a choice between two options, adding a third, unfavorable option can influence their decision making process. As a usage scenario, we constructed a choice architecture for password generators that followed this decoy pattern and compared their effect regarding usability and security. While a previous study indicated positive results, we received mixed results regarding the feasibility of the decoy effect. Based on our study, we can however propose concepts to improve persuasive approaches to nudge users towards stronger password strategies.
Figure 1: We investigate how graphical filters impact the usability and security of text passwords on mobile devices compared to displaying them in plain text or asterisks. It is difficult to mentally reverse distortions, hence it is challenging for observers to know what the text passwords above are. At the same time, if a user knows that the leftmost word is Color-Halftone, they can easily map the word's letters to the distortions. This improves error correction, while maintaining observation resistance. ABSTRACTEntering text passwords on mobile devices is a significant challenge. Current systems either display passwords in plain text: making them visible to bystanders, or replace characters with asterisks shortly after they are typed: making editing them harder. This work presents a novel approach to mask text passwords by distorting them using graphical filters. Distorted passwords are difficult to observe by attackers because they cannot mentally reverse the distortions. Yet passwords remain readable by their owners because humans can recognize visually distorted versions of content they saw before. We present results of an online questionnaire and a user study where we compared Color-halftone, Crystallize, Blurring, and Mosaic filters to Plain text and Asterisks when 1) entering, 2) editing, and 3) shoulder surfing one-word passwords, random character passwords, and passphrases. Rigorous analysis shows that Color-halftone and Crystallize filters significantly improve editing speed, editing accuracy and observation resistance compared to current approaches. CCS CONCEPTS• Security and privacy → Authentication; • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction.
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We investigate improvements to authentication on mobile touchscreen phones and present a novel extension to the widely used touchscreen pattern lock mechanism. Our solution allows including nodes in the grid multiple times, which enhances the resilience to smudge and other forms of attack. For example, for a smudge pattern covering 7 nodes, our approach increases the amount of possible lock patterns by a factor of 15 times. Our concept was implemented and evaluated in a laboratory user test ( = 36). The test participants found the usability of the proposed concept to be equal to that of the baseline pattern lock mechanism but considered it more secure. Our solution is fully backwards-compatible with the current baseline pattern lock mechanism, hence enabling easy adoption whilst providing higher security at a comparable level of usability.
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