Graphical Password Authentication: Strengthening Security in the Digital Age

Authentication is vital for maintaining system secu- rity. Graphical password-based authentication systems provide a promising alternative to traditional authentication methods such as alphanumeric or text-based passwords. Conventional authentication systems are susceptible to brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, password guessing and user memory fatigue. Users create a personalized password by selecting a sequence of images or points in an image grid, which enhances security due to the complexity of graphical choices over traditional textual passwords. Graphical Password Based Authentication (GPA) incorporates a combination of image-based cues and persuasive elements which encourages a user to select a secure password. Our system addresses a major security concern, shoulder surfing, by creating and using hybrid images. Index Terms—Password Space, Click-Point Distribution, Guessing Attacks, Recall Study, Shoulder Surfing Attacks, PCCP (Persuasive Cued Click Points), Hotspots, Hybrid Images, Cued Recall, False Accept Points, Deep Residual Networks (DRN), Edge Detection, Hybrid Textual-Graphical Authentication, Brute- force Attacks, Pattern Matching .