On Screen Randomized Keyboard with Virtual Password Functions

Abstract

Online banking has become increasingly popular globally because it is so easy and convenient for the internet users to manage their bank accounts from anywhere of the world at any time. The internet improves the user’s banking experience as he can access his account and handles all his financial needs from anywhere without going to the branch office using his computer connected to the internet. Online banking user’s faces various security risks such as brute force attacks, key logging attacks, shoulder surfing attacks, etc. The design of secure authentication protocols is quite challenging, considering that software installed in PCs to observe the user’s behavior and to capture the credentials, thus making the PCs untrusted devices. Involving human in authentication protocols is also difficult as they have limited computation capability and memorization. Therefore relying on users to enhance security will reduces the usability. The security and usability can be enhanced with the help of some handheld devices like smartphone. In this paper, a password based visual authentication protocol using random keyboard with some special symbols associated with each character is proposed. Also password is made more complex by introducing Virtual Password Functions. Using this new keyboard, users can enter their credentials. This is effective against the key logging attacks and shoulder surfing attacks by increasing the amount of short term memory required in an attack.
Key Words: Authentication, Smartphone, Malicious code, Keylogger, Shoulder Surfing Attacks (SSA), Differentiated Virtual Passwords, Secret Little Functions