Strengthening SMS-Based Authentication through Usability

Abstract

Current state-of-the art solutions for online banking authentication and identity management include methods for re-authenticating users via out-of-band channels for each transaction. SMS-based schemes belong to this category, and can provide strong authentication to protect against security attacks. Poor usability of these schemes is still a problem, which makes them vulnerable to other obvious attacks. This paper describes a method for improving the usability of typical SMS-based authentication schemes which thereby will improve their overall security.