The effects of coherence of the image used in the graphical password scheme in terms of usability and security

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Bilgisayar ve Öğretim Teknolojileri Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2012

Öğrenci: ÜLKÜ ARSLAN AYDIN

Eş Danışman: CENGİZ ACARTÜRK, KÜRŞAT ÇAĞILTAY

Özet:

There is a dilemma between security and usability, which are two fundamentally conflicting issues. From the usability perspective, authentication protocols should be easy to use and passwords generated from these protocols should be easy to remember. From the security perspective, passwords should be hard to guess and should not be written down or stored in a plain text. Instead of using text based passwords, graphical passwords have been proposed to increase both memorability and security. Biederman (1972) and Biederman, Glass, & Stacy (1973) reported that the objects in a coherent image were recognized and identified more efficiently and quickly than the objects in a jumbled image in which the jumbled image was created by dividing the coherent image into sections and changing the position of the sections without rotating them. The study was designed to experimentally examine the differences in usability and security of the graphical password scheme by manipulating the coherence of the displayed image. Sixty-three volunteers participated in the main experiment. The participants were divided into groups according to the type of image they were presented in the password creation (either coherent-image or jumbled-image) task. Each participant created a graphical password and three days after the first session (i.e., second session) s/he tried to remember it in order to authenticate to the system. The results revealed that in the proposed graphical password scheme, using coherent image has more advantages over jumbled image in terms of usability and security.