IMPROVING ACCESS SECURITY THROUGH 2D SHAPE-DRIVEN GRAPHICAL PASSWORDS

Authentication systems are paramount to individuals and institutions. Several methods are proposed and used to grant access for legitimate users to systems. The most common way of authenticating users is textual passwords. However, textual passwords can be forgotten—especially if they are used infrequently—or easily guessed, as many users tend to choose simple passwords that are easy to remember. Furthermore, even though other authentication mechanisms can be used such as biometric passwords, these methods may require extra equipment and requirements. Graphical authentication methods were proposed because humans can remember pictures and shapes more than written text. This paper presents an empirical analysis of a password creation mechanism based on selecting several intersected 2D shapes. This mechanism of password creation enhances remembering passwords and protecting them from being attacked since it automatically transforms these shapes into long textual passwords. The experimental results show that users experience little difficulty in remembering the 2D passwords. On average, users require about two attempts or less to remember their passwords under all experimental results