A Systematic Literature Review on the Security Attacks and Countermeasures Used in Graphical Passwords

Abstract

As technology continues to evolve, the need for robust and user-friendly authentication methods becomes increasingly vital to safeguarding sensitive information. Graphical passwords, a contemporary approach to authentication, utilize images, patterns, or graphical elements as a means of access control. This systematic literature review delves into the dynamic realm of graphical passwords, focusing on the myriad security attacks they face, and the diverse countermeasures devised to mitigate these threats. The graphical password scheme is one of the most popular schemes used, yet it is vulnerable to numerous security attacks, such as shoulder surfing attacks, smudge attacks, spyware, and more. In order to mitigate these security threats, numerous methods have been proposed, but there is no ultimate solution for the security attacks; each of the proposed methods has its own advantages and limitations. The core objective of this paper is to identify existing security threats to graphical password schemes and the corresponding countermeasures developed to mitigate these attacks. The study process begins by identifying the usable databases and search engines to identify all the relevant resources. These include Academic Search Elite @EBSCOhost,