Color Pass: An intelligent user interface to resist shoulder surfing attack

Abstract

Classical PIN entry mechanism is widely used for authenticating a user. It is a popular scheme because it nicely balances the usability and security aspects of a system. However, if this scheme is to be used in a public system then the scheme may suffer from shoulder surfing attack. In this attack, an unauthorized user can fully or partially observe the login session. Even the activities of the login session can be recorded which the attacker can use it later to get the actual PIN. In this paper, we propose an intelligent user interface, known as Color Pass to resist the shoulder surfing attack so that any genuine user can enter the session PIN without disclosing the actual PIN. The Color Pass is based on a partially observable attacker model. The experimental analysis shows that the Color Pass interface is safe and easy to use even for novice users.