preview

User Authentication in Computer Security

Better Essays

1 INTRODUCTION

User authentication is a most important component in most computer security. It provides user with access control and user accountability. As we know there are many types of user authentication systems in the market but alphanumerical username/passwords are the most common type of user authentication. They are many and easy to implement and use. Due to the limitation of human memory, most users tend to choose short or simple passwords which are easy to remember. Surveys show that frequent passwords are personal names of family members, birth date, or dictionary words. In most cases, these passwords are easy to guess and vulnerable to dictionary attack. Today users have many passwords for personal computers, social networks, E-mail, and more. They may decide to use one password for all systems to decrease the memory burden, which reduce security. Graphical passwords is harder to guess or broken by brute force. If the number of possible pictures is sufficiently large, the possible password space of a graphical pass-word scheme may exceed that of text-based schemes and thus most probably offer improved security against dictionary attacks. The use of graphical password methods is gaining awareness because of these advantages. Graphical passwords were originally described by Blonder. In his description, an image would appear on the screen, and the user would click on a few chosen regions of it. If the correct regions were clicked in, the user would be

Get Access