An algorithm for automatically choosing distractors for recognition based authentication using minimal image types

<p>When a user logs on to a recognition based authentication system, he or she is presented with a number of images, one of which is their pass image and the others are distractors. The user must recognise and select their own image to enter the system. If any of the distractors is too similar to the target, the user is likely to become confused and may well choose a distractor by mistake.</p> <p>It is simple for humans to rule on image similarity but such a labour intensive approach hinders the wider uptake of these mechanisms. Automating image similarity detection is a challenging problem but somewhat easier when the images being used are minimal image types such as hand drawn doodles and Mikons constructed using a computer tool.</p> <p>We have developed an algorithm, which has been reported earlier, to automatically detect if two doodle images are similar. This paper reports a new experiment to discover the amount of similarity in collections of doodles and Mikons, from a human perspective. This information is used to improve the algorithm and confirm that it also works well with Mikons.</p&gt

An investigation into the “beautification” of security ceremonies

“Beautiful Security” is a paradigm that requires security ceremonies to contribute to the ‘beauty’ of a user experience. The underlying assumption is that people are likely to be willing to engage with more beautiful security ceremonies. It is hoped that such ceremonies will minimise human deviations from the prescribed interaction, and that security will be improved as a consequence. In this paper, we explain how we went about deriving beautification principles, and how we tested the efficacy of these by applying them to specific security ceremonies. As a first step, we deployed a crowd-sourced platform, using both explicit and metaphorical questions, to extract general aspects associated with the perception of the beauty of real-world security mechanisms. This resulted in the identification of four beautification design guidelines. We used these to beautify the following existing security ceremonies: Italian voting, user-to-laptop authentication, password setup and EU premises access. To test the efficacy of our guidelines, we again leveraged crowd-sourcing to determine whether our “beautified” ceremonies were indeed perceived to be more beautiful than the original ones. The results of this initial foray into the beautification of security ceremonies delivered promising results, but must be interpreted carefully

Active User Authentication for Smartphones: A Challenge Data Set and Benchmark Results

In this paper, automated user verification techniques for smartphones are investigated. A unique non-commercial dataset, the University of Maryland Active Authentication Dataset 02 (UMDAA-02) for multi-modal user authentication research is introduced. This paper focuses on three sensors - front camera, touch sensor and location service while providing a general description for other modalities. Benchmark results for face detection, face verification, touch-based user identification and location-based next-place prediction are presented, which indicate that more robust methods fine-tuned to the mobile platform are needed to achieve satisfactory verification accuracy. The dataset will be made available to the research community for promoting additional research.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. Best poster award at BTAS 201

Cybersecurity Stovepiping

I. Introduction II. The Concept of Stovepiping III. Stovepiping in Cybersecurity ... A. Policy Making, Complexity, and Change ... B. Complex Passwords: A Case Study ... 1. Fundamentals of Password Complexity ... 2. “Guessability”—the False Assumption ... a. Password Guessing via Authentication (Login) Interfaces ... b. Password Guessing via Unprotected/Unsanitized Service ... c. Offline Password Attacks ... 3. “Defense in Depth”—Measuring Marginal Benefit IV. Implications of the Stovepiping Disjuncture ... A. Addressing the Same Question … B. Overcoming Policy Entrenchment ... C. Risk-Analytic Framework for Cybersecurity V. Conclusio

ZEBRA: Zero-Effort Bilateral Recurring Authentication (Companion report)

We describe and evaluate Zero-Effort Bilateral Recurring Authentication (ZEBRA) in our paper that appears in IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, May 2014. In this report we provide a more detailed comparative evaluation of ZEBRA against other related authentication schemes. The abstract of the paper follows. Common authentication methods based on passwords, tokens, or fingerprints perform one-time authentication and rely on users to log out from the computer terminal when they leave. Users often do not log out, however, which is a security risk. The most common solution, inactivity timeouts, inevitably fail security (too long a timeout) or usability (too short a timeout) goals. One solution is to authenticate users continuously while they are using the terminal and automatically log them out when they leave. Several solutions are based on user proximity, but these are not sufficient: they only confirm whether the user is nearby but not whether the user is actually using the terminal. Proposed solutions based on behavioral biometric authentication (e.g., keystroke dynamics) may not be reliable, as a recent study suggests. To address this problem we propose ZEBRA. In ZEBRA, a user wears a bracelet (with a built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and radio) on her dominant wrist. When the user interacts with a computer terminal, the bracelet records the wrist movement, processes it, and sends it to the terminal. The terminal compares the wrist movement with the inputs it receives from the user (via keyboard and mouse), and confirms the continued presence of the user only if they correlate. Because the bracelet is on the same hand that provides inputs to the terminal, the accelerometer and gyroscope data and input events received by the terminal should correlate because their source is the same - the user\u27s hand movement. In our experiments ZEBRA performed continuous authentication with 85% accuracy in verifying the correct user and identified all adversaries within 11 s. For a different threshold that trades security for usability, ZEBRA correctly verified 90% of users and identified all adversaries within 50 seconds

“This is the way ‘I’ create my passwords ...":does the endowment effect deter people from changing the way they create their passwords?

The endowment effect is the term used to describe a phenomenon that manifests as a reluctance to relinquish owned artifacts, even when a viable or better substitute is offered. It has been confirmed by multiple studies when it comes to ownership of physical artifacts. If computer users also "own", and are attached to, their personal security routines, such feelings could conceivably activate the same endowment effect. This would, in turn, lead to their over-estimating the \value" of their existing routines, in terms of the protection they afford, and the risks they mitigate. They might well, as a consequence, not countenance any efforts to persuade them to adopt a more secure routine, because their comparison of pre-existing and proposed new routine is skewed by the activation of the endowment effect.In this paper, we report on an investigation into the possibility that the endowment effect activates when people adopt personal password creation routines. We did indeed find evidence that the endowment effect is likely to be triggered in this context. This constitutes one explanation for the failure of many security awareness drives to improve password strength. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to confirm our findings, and to investigate the activation of the effect for other security routines