CogniPGA: Longitudinal Evaluation of Picture Gesture Authentication with Cognition-Based Intervention

Abstract

There is evidence that the visual behavior of users when creating graphical passwords affects the password strength. Adopting a cognitive style perspective in the interpretation of the results of recent studies revealed that users, depending on their cognitive style, follow different visual exploration paths when creating graphical passwords which affected the password strength. To take advantage of the inherent abilities of people, we proposed CogniPGA, a cued-recall graphical authentication scheme where a cognition-based intervention using gaze data is applied. This paper presents the longitudinal evaluation of the proposed scheme in terms of security, memorability, and usability from a cognitive style perspective. Results strengthen the assumptions that understanding and using the inherent cognitive characteristics of users could enable the design of user-first authentication schemes, where no compromises need to be made on security for benefiting usability or the other way around.

Exploring the Impact of Verbal-Imagery Cognitive Style on Web Search Behaviour and Mental Workload

“…Although there are not many cognitive style-MWL related studies, a number of studies have highlighted its effect on users' performance and behaviour in different human-machine communications, including user-authentication [12,13,28,[46][47][48], searching [18,51,62], e-learning [7,32,55,105], online shopping [9,24,27,101,117,118,120], and gaming [3,19,85,118]. For example, CAPTCHA preference and performance were affected by individuals' cognitive styles [12], different cognitive style readers had different searching and scanning strategies when they used electronic journals on mobile devices [18] and did the online shopping [24,117], the students had a better learning performance when they used the e-learning system that fit their cognitive styles [55].…”

EYEDi: Graphical Authentication Scheme of Estimating Your Encodable Distorted Images to Prevent Screenshot Attacks

“…Katsini et al proposed a system that encourages users to create strong passwords by hiding areas where they are likely to concentrate their gaze [17]. If the area of concentrated gaze is hidden, the user pays attention to other areas and registers the key gesture, which is difficult for the attacker to estimate.…”

“…Graphical authentication systems can be divided into three categories: 1. those that authenticate by clicking on cue points on the authentication screen [6], [11], [17] 2. those that authenticate by searching for a preregistered key image [1], [18]- [21], and 3. those that authenticate by searching for a combination of key images or/and symbols [22]. The system proposed in this paper, EYEDi, is a graphical authentication system classified as a 2nd category in which the user authenticates by searching a preregistered image.…”