Understanding environmental influences on performing password-based mobile authentication

Abstract

In a mobile environment, text-based passwords are still the most common mechanism for user authentication. Although various studies have been conducted to investigate what password composition policies are better oriented for mobile users, a limited study has been performed to understand the impact of password composition policies and environmental settings to mobile users' password typing abilities. In this paper, we present a study that investigates password strength, user behavior, and user sentiment across two password composition policies under two environmental conditions such as stationary (sedentary position) and on-the-go (while walking). From the study, we correlate our results with user behaviors under different environmental conditions to provide suggestions for password-composition policies for mobile-based authentication.