Authentication techniques for engendering session passwords with colors and text

Abstract – A highly severe menace to any computing device is the impersonation of an authenticate user. The most frequent computer authentication scheme is to use alphanumerical usernames and passwords. But the textual passwords are prone to dictionary attacks, eves dropping, shoulder surfing and social engineering. As such, graphical passwords have been introduced as an alternative to the traditional authentication process. Though the graphical password schemes provide a way of making more user-friendly passwords, while increasing the level of security, they are vulnerable to shoulder surfing. To address this problem, text can be used in combination with the colours and images to generate the session passwords, thereby making a stronger authentication means. In general, session passwords are those that can be used only once and for every new session, a new password is engendered. In this paper, we have proposed two authentication schemes for generating the session passwords which is identified as the primary level of authentication. Once the user has cleared the primary level, he is then allowed to deal with the secondary level of authentication involving a graphical password scheme. This method is most apposite to the PDAs besides other computing devices, as it is resistant to shoulder surfing.