A graphical password scheme based on rounded image selection

Graphical password is considered as an alternative to traditional textual password, but it also faces many threats such as shoulder-surfing attack. To design and build a more secure and robust graphical password system with the resistance to multiple attacks modalities, especially brute force attack, guessing attack and shoulder-surfing attack, it is important to avoid the credentials being captured in just one step, e.g., by adding several rounds of input. For example, with respect to shoulder-surfing attack resistance, the input design ought to incorporate a certain degree of fault tolerance, with the specific value determined based on the acceptable tolerance range. By integrating this fault tolerance characteristic, the system can effectively withstand shoulder-surfing attacks while preserving the integrity of the authentication procedure. In this work, we learn from the current literature and design a graphical password scheme based on rounded image selection (e.g., three rounds). We provide a detailed scheme design and perform a performance analysis via a user study. Our results indicate that our proposed scheme is viable and gets credit from the participants. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.