A Study on Improvement of Attack Resistance for the User Authentication Method for Touch Screen Devices “SWIPASS”

Abstract

Users of smartphones and/or tablet computers browse and download confidential document files routinely. Therefore, the higher security level is needed for smartphones and tablet computers than conventional mobile phones (feature phones). From this kind of background, Kosugi et al. proposed SWIPASS, an image-based user authentication method for touch screen devices by using images shot by user oneself and gotten from the WEB. SWIPASS has resistance to observation attack and recording attack, the most serious threats for touch screen devices. However, there is an issue such that the fake image, that is always become the swipe object, is comparatively easily recognized by attackers. Then, in this study, we propose a method that prevents identification of the fake image by attackers by blurring images that appear on authentication screen. We moreover conduct several experiments to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.