Multi-Observed Authentication: A secure and usable authentication based on multi-point observation of a single physical credential

Nowadays, it is no longer uncommon for a PC to be infected with malware. User authentication based on only one legitimate credential (such as a password) may be insufficient for judging whether a user is legitimate. A typical solution to this problem is two-factor authentication, which is a method of authentication based on the presentation of two factors by the user. Generally, the first factor is input into a PC and the second into a smartphone. However, this reduces usability by forcing the user to present multiple factors at each authentication. Therefore, we propose multi-observed authentication as a new method based on the concept of "confirmation of the user’s intention at the time of authentication, in addition to the validity of the credentials (passwords or authentication tokens)." The proposed method captures the user’s physical authentication actions as physical events and simultaneously observes each event at multiple points, ensuring that the credential is not sent by malware residing in the PC but is physically input by a real human.