A New Technique Using a Shuffling Method to Protect Confidential Documents from Shoulder Surfers

Abstract

In some environments (e.g., for government agencies or international corporations), it is challenging to protect and secure confidential information on a computer screen against shoulder surfers who want to access the confidential information by observing the victims computer screen. In this paper, we propose a simple and practical system named STM to mitigate shoulder surfers from reading computer screens by visually shuffling contents on an end users screen. To find an optimal setting for STM, we tested several configurations at character and word levels and showed that STM with a properly chosen configuration is effectively secure against using direct observation techniques.