Enhancing Visual Passwords Using a Grid-Based Graphical Password Authentication to Mitigate Shoulder Surfing

Abstract

Surfing Shoulder Surfing is a secret phrase-based attack which is a serious worry of protection in data security. Alphanumeric passwords are more helpless to attacks like shoulder surfing, dictionary attacks, etc., than graphical passwords. The creation of more muddled, challenging to-break passwords can be made simpler for clients with graphical authentication by consolidating the visuals and memory-based strategies like recall and recognition. In an imaged-based password, the user can choose pixels from the image to use as a secret key in the grid-based strategy, the user-selected image would show up on the screen with a framework overlay on it, and the client can pick explicit lattices to set their secret phrase. Besides, graphical passwords are powerless against shoulder surfing attacks, and due to this, clients are given a one-time made password via email. We investigated the limitations of image-based and grid-based authentication techniques and propose a grid-based graphical authentication system that addresses the limitations of image-based and grid-based techniques. The results of the grid-based graphical technique, as well as the image-based and grid-based approaches, have likewise been differentiated and analyzed. The convenience objective of our authentication system is to assist users in making better password selections, hence boosting security and broadening the usable password field. This method can be employed in many different contexts, such as forensic labs, banking, military, and other scenarios. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.